The arena is deserted. The crowd is gone. The broom pushers have finished, and they’ve turned the lights out. You can get up now.
Yeah, yeah. I know. McDonnell won and Deeds lost. But guess what? I checked this morning. The sun came up. It came up yesterday. It will come up tomorrow.
Get up-there is work to do.
An ethics debacle of historic proportions is unfolding before our very eyes. Phil Hamilton’s quid pro quo and Tommy Norment’s reach into the cash bucket pale in comparison.
Speaker Howell calls this debacle “a big to-do about nothing.” The cabinet sell-out is big. It is not about nothing.
There is a seeping creep to this ethic blindness. Now comes Robert Hurt, a good man, unsure about whether he should raise money for his congressional campaign during this session of the General Assembly.
Get up-there is work to do.
Are you paying attention to some of these pre-filed bills? Guns in churches? What’s next? Guns in libraries? Guns in nursing homes?
Get up-there is work to do.
Are you talking to your local governments? They are bug-eyed with stress over this budget. They’re getting the hell beat out of them from both ends.
Feel okay about leaving transportation funding to the Tooth Fairy?
Get up. Get up.
Four congressmen-Boucher, Perriello, Connolly, Nye-are at risk.
There is work to do. Get up.
The Virginia coast is at risk-and with it, a billion dollars in tourism.
Get off the canvas.
Finding your way out of the woods is not all that complicated. It is not some 12-step program. It is a two-stepper: 1) get up off your ass and 2) keep going.
There is work to do. Get up. Get up
Unlike Harry Byrd or Harry Reid I am an equal opportunity political critic. I waited 6 months out of a sense of politeness before I started slamming President Obama. He is the president after all. However, that mandatory honeymoon period has been over for a while and I feel almost compelled to throw editorial tomatoes at the president for some of his dumb assed ideas and actions.
I will not give Gov. McDonnell any grace period. Cabinet members should not serve on corporate boards. Period. No exceptions. The size and scope of Virginia’s modern day nanny state means that conflicts of interest between the corporations with cabinet board members and the state are inevitable. The present lack of trust between the electorate and the politicians they elect is at an all time high. This hybrid civil servant - corporate officer will only serve to make the mistrust worse. As Barnie Day has written, Virginia has 5,000 pages of regulations which apply to businesses in Virginia. What are the odds that some percentage of those regulations won’t impact the financial success of the companies with cabinet members on their boards of directors?
This is a horrible idea. McDonnell is proving to be politically tone deaf before he even moves into the governor’s mansion. The Democrats should rise up against this heinous plan. Reasonable Republicans should rise up against it too. I am totally opposed to this bad idea and I am generally a Republican and have worked for a large, for profit corporation for almost 30 years.
McDonnel ought to reverse himself while he still can.
And, if all else fails, the Democrat-controlled Senate should reject Sledd’s nomination.