Letters

Interesting take

    Last week’s article and Letters to the editor regarding Bedford County’s school budget were interesting.

    A few years back, the company I work for was near bankruptcy and the employees were asked to take reduced pay and fewer paid holidays instead of more layoffs. We agreed to this because we understood that every remaining employee was necessary for the continued operation of the company. The company survives, I still have a job and continue to pay my county taxes.

    The front page article revealed that 70.4% of employees surveyed would not take a pay cut in order to prevent layoffs. Perhaps those surveyed believe that not every employee is essential to continued operation of the public schools or perhaps they believe the recession should continue to affect everyone except public school employees.

Lynn Morris

Lynch Station

Worth further discussion

   

    Speaking only for myself as a pastor in a community whose elementary school is scheduled to be restructured, I support further discussing the idea of raising the property tax by 2 cents in order to keep all Bedford County schools open next year. In the case of Thaxton Elementary and Body Camp, both schools are an important part of the life of their communities. Their being redesigned as pre schools and their students bused elsewhere is something to be avoided.

    While no one enjoys paying taxes, as the saying goes “you get what you pay for.” If the folks in Richmond aren’t going to send the funds needed for our schools to remain open as they are, local government will have to step up and raise the funds.

    A recent poll by Channel 7 news states a majority of Bedford County residents say they would be willing to pay more sales taxes if it meant keeping all schools open. Would the same be true for property taxes?

    Many people object to raising property taxes as a burden on people with low or fixed incomes. Other localities have solved this problem with exemptions. For example in Roanoke, anyone whose income is less than $42,000 and whose assets, not counting the property and home, are less than $160,000 is exempt from property tax increases. Such an exemption means that a widow with a home and land who is living on her husband’s Social Security would not see her property taxes increased. This is a good argument for raising property taxes rather than sales taxes. There is no way to exempt the poor from a sales tax increase.

    How much extra revenue does the School Board need to keep the schools open? And would a 2 cent increase raise this revenue? Would a sales tax increase be better? And are the people of Bedford County indeed willing to pay extra taxes to keep the schools open? Or are they not?

    These are questions that need to be decide by the people of Bedford County and decided soon.

Rev. Geoff Hubbard

Thaxton

Supports Hurt

    I am very pleased and proud to be a supporter of my State Senator the Honorable Robert Hurt for the office of 5th District Congressman.

    Sen. Hurt has demonstrated personal integrity and honesty through his actions and his deeds and has demonstrated outstanding moral character and family values.  He lives these values – he doesn’t just advertise them.

    Sen. Hurt has legislative experience in both the Virginia House and Senate. He is a realist who has practiced legislative responsibilities and knows the importance of teamwork and developing partnerships with other representatives in order to achieve Conservative Objectives on our behalf.

    Sen. Hurt is a life-long Virginian and a well known entity!   He has stood the test of multiple political campaigns with outstanding results.  He constantly seeks input and guidance from his constituents and members of our community and is readily accessible to all.

    Sen. Hurt is a Law & Order Patriot who has been a prosecutor and is a Constitutional Strict-Constructionist and is a guardian of our 2nd amendment rights.  He knows that without our 2nd amendment rights our 1st, 5th and 14th amendment rights are at risk.

    Sen. Hurt is focused on the positive and is optimistic about the future of our country.  He knows the best way to solve our large and complex challenges are constructive engagement and not hostility and arrogance.  He believes in our two party system and has and is participating in that system very successfully as a Constructive Conservative who will represent us well within the structure, rules and processes of the United States Congress.  Even hockey games have rules and you can’t help your team score if you’re in the time-out box.

    We recently elected both a President and a 5th District Congressman neither of whom had measurable track records or the most basic required experience for those jobs.  We are now experiencing the folly of that election outcome.  Let’s not make that mistake again!

    The majority of Republican and Independent voters and many Reagan-Democrats will surely support and vote for our highly qualified Southern Gentleman – Sen. Robert Hurt.

    Let us join together with one voice and put a Real Hurt on One Term Tommy!

Lars Hagen

Moneta

Keeping the public ignorant

    The mass media has again done a perfect job in their aim to keep the public ignorant about many of the unlawful things that are being done in Washington “in the people’s interest.”

    On Jan. 11 the White House press secretary gave text of a new Executive Order, EO 13528 signed by Barack Obama that day, to all major media’s press representatives.   You can find this complete text in the Federal Register dated Jan. 14.

     But the media “obediently” carried nary a word about EO 13528, even though it gives the president dictatorial power in a national emergency and eliminates the last roadblock to declaring martial law in the United States.

    The Executive Order, without the consent of Congress, sets up a Council of  10 Governors, half of them Democrats and half Republicans.  Under direction of the Pentagon, these governors are to discuss “synchronization and integration of state and federal military activities in the United States.”

     The Constitutions of Virginia and the U. S. nowhere allow such “synchronization and integration” since each state governor has complete command over the National Guard in his/her state, except when it is federalized for duty abroad as in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    And, the Posse Comitatus Act specifically prohibits use of the National Guard for domestic law enforcement purposes.  If used that way, that would be inviting our fine young state soldiers to shoot ourselves and our neighbors if there were unrest.  The whole Executive Order 13528 is blatantly, arrogantly unlawful.

    But here’s the rub: The Virginia House of Delegates and Governor Bob McDonnell don’t want you to know EO 13528 even exists.

    On Feb. 12 the House Privileges and Elections,(P&E) Committee was considering House Joint Resolution 125 proclaiming importance of the Tenth Amendment.  This  amendment reserves to the states powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states.  As we have seen, EO 13528 is obviously a Tenth Amendment matter.     

    But, when documented language discussing for the first time this terrible EO threatening Obama tyranny over the entire U. S. was presented to the House P&E Committee Feb. 12, they did not want to mention it in their Tenth Amendment HJR 125.

    Delegate Lacey Putney of Bedford is a member of the House P&E Committee.  He had received full explanatory information about EO 13528 before the committee meeting.  Being busy with other matters, he did not attend the meeting, but voted by proxy for the original exclusionary HJR 125.  This is how we are blithely voted into federal dictatorship and tyranny by our worthy “representatives.”

    There still may be a chance to inform Virginians what is going on if we can get the Senate Rules Committee, where HJR 125 is going next, to amend the original stripped-down language so as to include vital facts about EO 13528 that everyone needs to know.

     State Senator Steve Newman is a member of the four- member Republican minority on the 17-member Rules committee.  If he moves additional language on EO 13528 be added to HJR 125, the Democrat-controlled Rules Committee will have to vote on his motion, up or down.  Even if they vote his motion down, on the basis that such language is critical of Democrat Obama --- as it is --- Newman will still gain points for his honest efforts to bring the terrible truth to Virginians and the rest of the U. S. population.

     It’s worth going for.  Let’s all tell Newman what we want him to do.

 

George Kelly

Bedford

Brainwashing party

    Over thirty thousand members and guests of the global warming industry had a big brainwashing party in Copenhagen before Christmas while the United States was digging out from a major storm that went from California through New England followed by another one that paralyzed the east coast.

    Then another blizzard pounded the northern plains Christmas Day followed by some of the coldest windy weather in January since the record cold of 1977. The Mid-Atlantic was buried under the heaviest snow ever recorded during February. At one point every state had snow on the ground. The whole northern hemisphere experienced an unusually cold winter all across Europe and even to China and Korea. Not only has this winter been cold, but the corn and soybeans were slow to mature due to one of the coolest Midwest summers on record.

    This winter weather pattern reminded me of the cold snowy winters from 1958 through 1977. The sleds that Santa Claus brought us in the late ‘40s still had the paint on the runners when the blizzard of February 1958 came, but we wore them out before the weather cycle changed. Big Otter River had ice that would hold up a farm tractor in 1977. At this time the alarmists were predicting the coming of the next ice age and that the armadillos were already heading south.

    Until I was 12 years old I thought the old folks were lying about cutting ice off the creeks and ponds to store it in the ice houses before the days of refrigeration. I’m sure my grand kids feel the same today when I tell them about the blizzard of 1966 or about carrying water for a month in 1977 when the water line from the spring froze. According to climate data presented by the real scientists I think the kids will soon be ice skating on ponds in Virginia and the plumbers will be thawing out pipes again. 

    The meeting in Copenhagen had nothing to do with protecting the planet from man made pollution. It is about bringing all the nations of the earth to the same economic level so the whole world can be ruled by one socialist government, the United Nations. The citizens of the United States will be bled into poverty through the energy tax brought on by the “cap and trade” legislation. The money left over after the crooks plunder their share will be used to bring the third world nations up to our lowered standard of living. Congressman Perriellio and Boucher voted for this disastrous bill and Webb and Warner will most likely support it in the Senate.

    If you still believe that global warming is caused by man after this winter’s weather and the false scientific data that was exposed in November, you need to go to You Tube and watch the video “The Great Global Warming Swindle” by Martin Zurkin that was aired in England on WAG TV. Then you need to watch the video of ABC news attacking Zurkin instead of the science backing up his documentary. Jesse Ventura, the former governor of Minnesota, also has a good documentary on the money to be made by the crooks like Al Gore off of global warming.

    Paul Coleman, the founder of the Weather Channel is leading 30,000 skeptical scientists in a lawsuit to get Al Gore’s 2500 so called global warming scientists to debate them. The odds are twelve to one that Al is lying and I have always been told that a man who would lie to you will steal from you. Al Gore couldn’t care less about the planet, but is doing a great job of getting rich at the expense of the average American’s ignorance and the establishment media is backing him up. The saddest part of this situation is that the people with the most education are the ones falling for the greatest scientific and tax scam ever pulled on mankind.

     I think that God has sent us this unusually cold winter to punish us for believing a false profit like Al Gore instead realizing that God is in control of the planet.

Richard H. Ruff

Goode