Let Them Pay Their Own Way

The median household income in Fairfax County in 1999 was $81,050. In Dickenson County it was $23,431. (link) And the people of Dickenson are paying for the people of Fairfax to get to work each morning.

God knows the government employees who live in Fairfax and who commute to Washington DC each day can afford to pay to get themselves there. Instead, we here in Southwest Virginia, where tax rates are now at such a level that area businesses are shutting down in droves because they cannot compete with low-tax countries like Singapore or low-tax states like Florida, help subsidize the rich folks' ride to work by funding the mass transit system there known as Metro.*

We here in Southwest Virginia are slowly coming to grips with the notion that what is needed to fix Northern Virginia - more tax revenue - will, if allowed to pass, have an adverse effect on Southwest Virginia - a decline in our already devastated economy. More taxes here translate into fewer employers and no career opportunities.

It seems a clear solution to this dilemma would be for those northern counties - if they need money for transportation improvements that will benefit only their citizens - to acquire tax revenue locally. The Virginia Senate proposed just that and a House committee turned it down. (Read about it here)

Now this is going to sound vindictive. But it is the northern counties of Virginia that overwhelmingly voted for our new governor who, as soon as he came into office, proposed the largest tax increase in the history of the commonwealth. The people of Fairfax and Arlington and Alexandria and Woodbridge and Prince William knew exactly what they were doing when they voted for the Democrat. Tim Kaine is only doing what Democrats always do. The people up north, in voting for the scoundrel, obviously were accepting of a greater tax burden. Fine for them.

But we don't need more of a burden here. We need more employers. And the way to attract employers is to enhance the potential for them to grow the bottom line by relocating to low-tax Southwest Virginia.

I watched the remake of "Bad News Bears" last night on DVD. In one scene, Coach Buttermaker pulls a small, frail player aside as the little fella is going up to bat and the coach tells him to lean into the pitch in order to have the ball hit him, so that he could get on base. "Take one for the team," he said to his player. The player did. And I felt his pain. The second time he came up to bat, though, he was again told to sacrifice himself, but this time the player said to himself, "that's enough of that" and instead swung for the fences. I cheered for him.

We in Southwest Virginia have been team players long enough. We've been told over and over again to "take one for the team." The people here have been battered beyond their endurance. We've leaned into more than our share of pitches in order to benefit the folks up north. We're not doing it any more.

As for the rest of you, get beaned again if you so choose. As for us, we're now inclined to take the bat, beat the coach, and ask for new leadership and a different strategy; one that benefits the entire team.

* The mass transit system in Southwest Virginia involves U-Haul rentals to take displaced workers north.

(author unknown)