Columns

    Last month Jack Jones, the county’s director of fire and rescue, reminded the Bedford County Board of Supervisors how much it costs to equip a fire department.
    Jones was asking for funds for turn-out suits, the coats and pants firefighters wear. One item that he presented was a diagram showing how much it costs to equip a firefighter, including the air packs that allow them to go into a smoke-filled building. The total cost came to $11,088.

Just a few days ago, President Obama announced that he would once again “pivot” to the economy. The bottom line of his speech: after four-and-a-half years of the Obama Administration, “We're not there yet.”

The President is right. We’re not there yet.

    Virginia’s economic growth, which has outpaced the national recovery, has been driven in no small part by our more than 640,000 small businesses.  
    With more than 3 million employees throughout the commonwealth working in small businesses, many of them technology-based startups, it is imperative that we maintain the competitive edge that makes Virginia one of the best places for businesses to grow or locate.  But a forthcoming tax threatens to put the brakes on this fragile economic recovery we are experiencing.

    Barack Obama has earned himself a place in history for presiding over one of America’s most scandal-ridden presidencies — certainly the most scandal-ridden since Richard Nixon’s Watergate debacle. There are so many that it would be difficult for the media, even if most members of the mainstream media weren’t President Obama’s lap dogs, to give any single one major coverage.