“The ranks of Hampton Roads’ unemployed grew by more than 2,400, while the jobless rate climbed to 6.9 percent from 6.6 percent in November, the VEC said.” (Virginian-Pilot).
100 Delegates and 40 Senators approach February with November distinctly in their rear-view mirror. Remember November? When finding any of them who would support a tax increase would be akin to finding a Reverend Wright at a Republican fundraiser?
Things ain’t great. Hampton Roads unemployment is worse than statewide unemployment. So, it ticks me off when rich folks in rich counties slap a $1,000 annual toll on Hampton Roads commuters to pay for road maintenance while their wealthy selves get Hampton Roads gas tax money to pay for theirs.
It ticks me off when those who represent the most economically distressed cities in Hampton Roads are sweating over how to get government more money.
Local governments are in a bind, too. It isn’t a secret that more and more challengers for Delegate and Senator have been coming from local government, implanting a huge incentive for state legislators to put the squeeze on City Councils by passing along the revenue cuts. Nothing derails a challenger like a record of raising real estate taxes, ya know.
Meanwhile, some people think that rising unemployment is just the perfect time to continue their mantra about a “transportation crisis” that is just going to destroy things if we don’t build another group of tunnels and raise taxes. (and no, the national recession wasn’t caused by a lack of a third crossing which, even if the 2002 referendum passed, wouldn’t have been even close to built yet)
This transportation crisis risks being the Chicken Little of Virginia Politics. There’s only so many years voters can hear calls of impending doom before they start asking why it hasn’t happened. Kind of like that LANDSLIDE of lawsuits and litigation that we were promised would result from the marriage amendment.
Don’t even get me started about the global warming that would flood the coasts, if you ignore the coming ice age warned by the same crowd in the 1970s.
That’s the problem with crisis rhetoric. When you cry “Wolf!,” there better be a wolf.
So, as “Let them eat cake” legislators who think nothing of hitting up the folks for higher payments to government during rising unemployment, let’s pretend it’s before Election Day again.
Stop making hard times worse.
