AFP hits the road again with the "Cut Virginia Spending" tour

Looks as if Ben Marchi, Virginia Director of Americans for Prosperity-Virginia, will be on the road again as he heads out on the "Cut Virginia Spending" tour to unveil AFP's "Commonsense Model Budget." Watching our pocketbooks, AFP believes:

We MUST hold accountable any Delegate or Senator who attempts to erase this deficit by raising taxes on hard working Virginians. After all, Virginians expect their legislators to lead with real fixes, not temporary band-aids to get through the next budget year or campaign cycle.

Over the next three days, AFP will be in Fredericksburg, Gainsville, Martinsville, Newport News, Norfolk, Charlottesville, and Culpeper.

A press release from AFP-VA explains:

AFP-VA is going after Senators who want to increase your taxes rather than cut wasteful programs!

*Please join us tomorrow, Wednesday, or Thursday as we travel across Virginia to rally against the LIBERAL Senate plan to raise your taxes*

Yesterday, we applauded the House of Delegates while blasting the Senate as legislators unveiled their plans to close a more than $4 billion budget deficit.

This week, we are traveling to a city near you to unveil AFP-Virginia’s "Commonsense Model Budget." The model budget provides an overview of where cuts SHOULD be made. Copies of the model budget will be distributed at the events listed below so you can hold your legislators accountable and give them a roadmap with specific instructions on HOW to shrink the size of government!

Join AFP at one of these stop ... and help them cut Virginia spending!

Tuesday, February 23, 2010
3:00 pm FREDERICKSBURG EVENT
Comfort Suites
541 Warrenton Road
Fredericksburg, VA 22406

7:30 pm GAINESVILLE
Hampton Inn
7300 Atlas Walk Way
Gainesville, VA 20155

Wednesday, February 24, 2010
11:00 am NEWPORT NEWS EVENT
Office of Senator John Miller
12284 Warwick Boulevard
Newport News, VA 23606

3:00 pm NORFOLK EVENT
Azalea Inn
2344 East Little Creek Road
Norfolk, VA 23518-3225

Thursday, February 25, 2010
8:30 am MARTINSVILLE EVENT
Office of Senator Roscoe Reynolds
46 West Main Street
Martinsville, VA 24112

5:00 pm CULPEPER EVENT
Train Depot
111 S. Commerce Street
Culpeper, VA 22701

6:30 pm CHARLOTTESVILLE EVENT
Timberwood Grill
3311 Worth Crossing
Charlottesville, VA 22911

Message from Americans to politicians: "Cut the spending"

"America's problem is not that our people pay too little in taxes, it's that our politicians spend too much. Cut the spending first, then we can talk about taxes. -- Washington Examiner, January 27, 2010

From On High: "The American Dream. The American Nightmare."

I love the blunt honesty of Jerry's posts ... and today he has another that jumped off the aggregator at me. Many people are losing homes in the mortgage crisis that has gripped the country ... Jerry puts it in perspective.

I owned my first home at the age of 20, a low-priced fixer-upper rental house that needed all kinds of help. We went to work on it, pouring our small salaries into paint and siding and landscaping and updating, and lived there four years before buying a more expensive home in a much nicer neighborhood. Our hard work and patience had paid off ... we had equity in the fixer-upper that we poured into the new home ... and we never looked back.

Even with moves to another state and back again, we never bought beyond our means. In fact, we were encouraged by others that we could afford much more ... but we didn't want to stretch ourselves since I was a stay-at-home mom and we lived on one income.

Bottom line: you are responsible for your own decisions. Jerry's post shows what happens otherwise.

Health Care: "Socialism creeps in while America sleeps"

Democrats on the take and in the dead of night pass an execrable piece of legislation that they haven't read, the public doesn't want and only socialists could love. What has happened to this country? -- Investor's Business Daily, 12/21/09

While most Americans were distracted with holiday preparations four days before Christmas and in the middle of the Blizzard of 2009, the Senate worked in the dead of night much as the Grinch did while looting Whoville.

While Americans struggling with smaller incomes, lost jobs, and repossessed home carefully counted out their dollars to buy Christmas gifts, what was the U.S. Senate doing? IBD wrote:

... there they were, the United States Senate, at 1 a.m. Monday, rushing to vote in the middle of a snowstorm to close debate on the most important piece of legislation of our time — the nationalization of the U.S. health care system. And we've been scrambling ever since to make sense of it.

Let's see if we have this right:

• This was a vote on a Democrat-concocted scheme that Americans have rejected every time it's been proposed for 100 years and that is opposed again, by 54% to 41% by the public at large, by 2-to-1 by practicing physicians and by every last member on the Republican side of the aisle.

• The vote was taken without any members having read the main 2,074-page bill, let alone the 383 pages of amendments that were tacked on at the last minute to buy off senators, including Nebraska's Ben Nelson, Louisiana's Mary Landrieu and Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders.

• Despite growing public opposition, Democratic members had the nerve to call those who questioned their monstrosity "obstructionists" and worse. Rhode Island's Sheldon Whitehouse called health care bill foes "birthers," "fanatics" and "people running around in right-wing militia and Aryan support groups." Is this what Democrats meant when they said they seek bipartisan solutions to the nation's problems?

• The bill contains at last count 18 new taxes totaling an estimated $406 billion — including significant new levies on those earning less than $250,000, a major breach of Obama's pledge not to raise taxes by "one penny" on those in that income group.

A family of four that refuses to buy into a "qualifying" health insurance program will pay a "surtax" of as much as $6,750. At the same time, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that health insurance premiums will nearly double by 2016.

The U.S. Senate went on to vote in the early morning hours of Christmas Eve to pass nationalized health care. And I'm to believe there are so-called financial conservative Democrats? Sorry. Anyone who voted for this monstrosity could not possibly be financially conservative in any way, shape, or form.

The American people recognize a rat when they see it. Our battle to defeat/overturn this horrible bill has just begun even with Harry Reid's slippery unknown wording saying otherwise.

We're ready, we're steady, we're resolved. Game on!

LTE: "Government needs to remember who is in charge"

Letter to the Editor
Staunton News Leader
January 1, 2010

To the Editor:

Our government has no authority to take over control of our health care!

How dare they "buy" the votes of Senators with our taxpayer money. Taxpayers will bear the unfair burden of promises given to Nebraska and others.

How dare they refuse to listen to their constituents — and sell us out.

How dare they be so arrogant — and not respond to faxes, phone calls, emails.

How dare they spend money our grandchildren will never be able to pay off.

How dare they trample what our founding fathers fought so hard to obtain — the freedom to control our own lives.

They work for us — and — we the people need to take back our government.

Remember this at election time.

SUE WARD
Staunton, Virginia

Augusta Board of Supervisors ... leave no dollar unspent

Got home around 10:30 tonight from an Augusta County Board of Supervisors meeting that was still going when I left. Four public hearings in one night ... how ridiculous is that? That on top of a staff briefing at 1:30 this afternoon that lasted two hours. I actually took the title line from Supervisor Tracy Pyles during the staff briefing. He has been totally disgusted at the hand-over-fist spending of this board.

Tonight the BOS and Planning Commission were there for a public hearing about the 5,000 zoning change proposals that will affect everything from livestock to paving parking lots to lighting to what kind of trees a business can plant.

Probably 30-40 people addressed the board in the first hearing that lasted from 7-9:15 pm. I talked to a bunch of people afterwards who were ticked off. Plant a certain type of tree? One business owner said he would rather hire an unemployed person.

More on this update Tuesday. I surely hope they didn't vote for that colossal pile of red tape tonight....

We will REMEMBER IN NOVEMBER 2011....