Day: January 31, 2010

Bill Moyers gives us a behind the scene expose of one of the Tea Party’s leaders, Dick Armey.  Dick Armey retired from Congress a few years ago and went on to work with FreedomWorks which is one of the main movers and shakers behind the Tea Party Movement.  Armey leads of life of wealth and privilege and says  he gets paid lobbyist fees he describes as  a ‘darn handsome piece of dough’ for his work.

Most of what Armey does is go around blasting every aspect of the proposed health care reform.  He did the same thing to Hillary Clinton as you will see in the video.  What Armey fails to tell the Tea Party protestors and the public is that he has a Cadillac health care planned subsidized by the government which means you and I pay for it. 

Sit back and watch hypocrisy at its worst:  

[Editor Note: Aside removed from post. it was an unsubstantiated rumor. I actually don’t like those and it was snide. Correction also made in title. Substitute party for bag. Unintentional mistake.]

Sharon Bulova(D), Corey Stewart(R), and Stephen York (I)
all blast Kaine and  McDonnell for  the freeze proposal for the Local Composite Index. It is a worthwhile read and further proof that this is a bipartisan state issue. The Northern Virginia jurisdictions will be severely hampered by this decision should it be passed.

Reprinted from the Washington Post:

Insult from Richmond
By Sharon Bulova, Corey A. Stewart and Scott K. York

Education is the silver bullet. Our children are our future. These are things we know intuitively, and in these uncertain economic times, we must continue to strengthen this foundation to ensure our economic recovery and success in a global marketplace.

As governments at every level face significant budget shortfalls, elected officials are wrestling with difficult decisions and painful cuts. In Northern Virginia, unfortunately, our challenge is exacerbated by a recent state budget proposal to freeze the local composite index (LCI) for K-12 education.

Read More

The extreme poverty usually associated with the inner city has come to the suburbs.  As foreclosures and joblessness have spread, so has a suburban blight that is causing property values to drop even lower.  Other neighboring metro areas have their own share of this problem. 

According to the Washington Examiner:

For every poor person in the District, Arlington or Alexandria, two more live in the outer suburbs, according to the Brookings study.

“They’ve been hit the hardest,” Brookings scholar Elizabeth Kneebone said of the outer suburbs. “We can expect the numbers in 2009 to show an even larger increase in economic difficulties in the area.”

Here are some new statistics regarding poverty.  It was not all in Prince William County and surrounded cities:

Poverty in the Washington area

»  120,699 poor in D.C., Arlington and Alexandria in 2008

»  251,096 poor in outer suburbs, 2008

»  Inner city poverty rate dropped by 2.5 percent between 2000 and 2008

»  Outer suburban poverty rate rose by 0.3 percent between 2000 and 2008

Source: Brookings Institution

Getting a free lunch

Free and reduced meals in Montgomery County schools, by school year:

»  2007-08: 26 percent of students

»  2008-09: 27 percent of students

»  2009-10: 29 percent of students

Source: Maryland Hunger Solutions

 Fairfax residents look for help

Percentage increase in public assistance applications, November 2007-November 2009:

»  Food stamps: 78 percent

»  Welfare: 54 percent

»  Medicaid: 10 percent

Source: Fairfax County

Read more at the Washington Examiner:

 

The foreclosure crisis has forced thousands of residents out of their homes and created pockets of blight in the sprawling suburbs. Anecdotes are pouring in about former single-family homes becoming boarding houses or rental tenements. The problem has gotten so bad in Fairfax County, for instance, that officials there created a special task force to combat emerging slumlords.