GOVERNMENT WASTE

- VIRGINIA -

Date	Individual / State Agency	Who, What, Where?
06/09/04	Virginia Baseball Authority	Virginia Baseball Stadium A new $360 million baseball stadium has been planned for Virginia except the creative geniuses want to use “Moral Obligation Bonds” to finance the construction. Now this is an interesting twist to screw the taxpayers. Moral obligation bonds essentially guarantee that the state will make the debt service payments on the stadium in the event of default. There actually has been some debate in the State Assembly on whether the state should help finance a facility for a private business. Will we never learn? As I said before, government has no business feeding the Christians to the lions. We can draw the following firm conclusions from this or any tainted deal to build an arena or stadium. 1. Government has enough trouble running government without being involved in ventures that should be handled solely by private capital. 2. If the deal is so wonderful, why is it that the sports group (the Devils or anybody else) can’t raise sufficient money through investment capital firms to build the arena? The answer is because investors realize that the project will not provide adequate Return on Investment (ROI), i.e., it’s a loser without public funds! 3. Contrary to many people’s opinions, the government is not in the business of job creation. That is the job of the free-enterprise market.
09/01/05		Democrats Rarely Do Their Own Reality Check I suspect that most people tend to associate Democrats with spending money (lots of money) on the people themselves, while Republicans support big business and preach small government but in reality are hypocrites if you examine their spending habits. Now Democrats seem to deserve the “tax and spend” label, but the Virginia Lt. Governor, Timothy M. Kaine, who is running for governor on the Democratic ticket, is trying to buy votes by pledging to support free, universal access to high-quality preschool education. He sites various studies that show the benefit of early childhood education for 3 and 4-year-olds. It sounds really good, but the Lt. Governor forgot about a minor trifle. The bill for this free education would be about $5,400 per year for each student or $300 million over four years. His proposal also ignores the little problem of construction of new schools to educate the preschoolers, so the costs could be much higher. He actually had the gall to state that by providing first-class pre-school education, it would save the state money in the long run by reducing the bill for remedial education. The Lt. Governor must have been educated using the latest theories of “New Math.” He has no idea where the money will come from, but since we know that he’s a Democrat, if he’s elected, watch out for tax increases.