Grow again? Attract more Feds
Bensblurb # 525 2/11/10....(.by the way the 54th wedding anniversary for Ben and Carole Lee.)
Improve our County? Attract more feds
Getting rid of the BPOL(business and professional occupations license) tax should help make Stafford more attractive to new businesses and less hostile to those already here. That’s the upshot of your vote for county supervisors last fall.
In turn, let’s hope the businesses will again thrive and help the county out of its troublesome financial situation. But let’s face facts.
What we really need are lots more prosperous homeowners to move here and get the builders to humming again. And here, things are looking up.
The county has enjoyed relatively low unemployment. But much more important, prospects are particularly brightening for our folks commuting to jobs up north in bureaucrat land.
It’s no secret that government remains the major financial nourishment for lots of our residents. And there’s no prospect of that flagging, but rather the opposite during President Obama’s first term. Pass Obamacare and the jobs floodgates will open even wider.
Whatever. Government just grows and grows. That is the truism for our times. It doesn’t shrink. For example, although our area has a lot fewer farms than 50-75 years ago (when there were agricultural county agents’ offices to serve them), the offices still thrive. In four area counties, they still employ 30 or more workers. Of course, some specialize in gardening--a vital taxpayer concern no doubt.
It’s plain to see why. “Government is out of control, schools are out of control, health costs are out of control, lawsuits are out of control...” writes Philip Howard in the Washington Post.
Just look at this. For 2009, federal civilian (full-time equivalent) employees numbered 1.978 milion versus 1.875 million in 2008. Obama’s budget adds another 170,000 in the next two years.
Granted, as the Washington Examiner has noted, Obama in 2008 pledged a net spending cut: "I will conduct an immediate and periodic public inventory of administrative offices and functions and require agency leaders to work together to root out redundancy. Where consolidation is not the right strategy to improve efficiency, I will improve information sharing and use of common assets to minimize wasteful duplication."--happy talk.
Those cuts must be awfully hard to find. Yet, Head Start, that flagship pre-kindergarten program introduced in 1965, has been a $166 billion failure, according to a multi-year study from the Department of Health and Human Services, according to Pajamas Media.
Hold your breath and count to ten, and that program may just die.
One reason for sarcasm: “A majority of union members in America (52 percent) now work for the government, up from 49 percent in 2008. Put another way, three times more union members now work in the Post Office than in the auto industry,” wrote another blogger.
Over 37 percent of government employees belong to unions
Two conclusions: The trends are good for Stafford, and good contrarily for the Tea Party movement, whose growth had puzzled many Washingtonians.
Another, nonpolitical observation: Goodbye, global warming, sadly, considering our winter here. Which occasions a further wintry shudder: Climate change, according to a piece in Mother Jones, can come with violent swiftness. The ice age once froze Europe in less than a year, some 12,800 years ago...Once triggered, the cold persisted for 1,300 years.
So don’t throw away your Snuggies.---Ben Blankenship
********
Improve our County? Attract more feds
Getting rid of the BPOL(business and professional occupations license) tax should help make Stafford more attractive to new businesses and less hostile to those already here. That’s the upshot of your vote for county supervisors last fall.
In turn, let’s hope the businesses will again thrive and help the county out of its troublesome financial situation. But let’s face facts.
What we really need are lots more prosperous homeowners to move here and get the builders to humming again. And here, things are looking up.
The county has enjoyed relatively low unemployment. But much more important, prospects are particularly brightening for our folks commuting to jobs up north in bureaucrat land.
It’s no secret that government remains the major financial nourishment for lots of our residents. And there’s no prospect of that flagging, but rather the opposite during President Obama’s first term. Pass Obamacare and the jobs floodgates will open even wider.
Whatever. Government just grows and grows. That is the truism for our times. It doesn’t shrink. For example, although our area has a lot fewer farms than 50-75 years ago (when there were agricultural county agents’ offices to serve them), the offices still thrive. In four area counties, they still employ 30 or more workers. Of course, some specialize in gardening--a vital taxpayer concern no doubt.
It’s plain to see why. “Government is out of control, schools are out of control, health costs are out of control, lawsuits are out of control...” writes Philip Howard in the Washington Post.
Just look at this. For 2009, federal civilian (full-time equivalent) employees numbered 1.978 milion versus 1.875 million in 2008. Obama’s budget adds another 170,000 in the next two years.
Granted, as the Washington Examiner has noted, Obama in 2008 pledged a net spending cut: "I will conduct an immediate and periodic public inventory of administrative offices and functions and require agency leaders to work together to root out redundancy. Where consolidation is not the right strategy to improve efficiency, I will improve information sharing and use of common assets to minimize wasteful duplication."--happy talk.
Those cuts must be awfully hard to find. Yet, Head Start, that flagship pre-kindergarten program introduced in 1965, has been a $166 billion failure, according to a multi-year study from the Department of Health and Human Services, according to Pajamas Media.
Hold your breath and count to ten, and that program may just die.
One reason for sarcasm: “A majority of union members in America (52 percent) now work for the government, up from 49 percent in 2008. Put another way, three times more union members now work in the Post Office than in the auto industry,” wrote another blogger.
Over 37 percent of government employees belong to unions
Two conclusions: The trends are good for Stafford, and good contrarily for the Tea Party movement, whose growth had puzzled many Washingtonians.
Another, nonpolitical observation: Goodbye, global warming, sadly, considering our winter here. Which occasions a further wintry shudder: Climate change, according to a piece in Mother Jones, can come with violent swiftness. The ice age once froze Europe in less than a year, some 12,800 years ago...Once triggered, the cold persisted for 1,300 years.
So don’t throw away your Snuggies.---Ben Blankenship
********
posted by Ben Blankenship at
8:20 PM
