Trumping the Commonwealths:
Polls are garbage. There is only one poll that counts, and that is the general election. In 2013 there was a concerted effort by pollsters to show how devastating a loss the Republican ticket would have on election day. Instead of a ten point victory on election day for McAuliffe we had less than a two point victory. For AG the race was almost imperceptibly close. Polls are being used by the MSM to crush Republican spirits. In a Presidential race this is hard to accomplish.
Virginia is in play: Living and electioneering in NoVA one gets the impression that Trump doesn’t have a chance. Other parts of the state must make up for the margins in the Commonwealth’s largest county. Pulling out 45% in Fairfax is a game changer. Working early absentee voting in one of the most liberal areas of Fairfax I saw support for Trump from working class women in uniform getting off their shifts, I saw immigrants before heading to work, I saw older women explain to the Democrats how they wouldn’t vote for a criminal in the White House, I saw African-American mothers having picked up their children from school supporting Trump and explaining to their children the voting process, and yes I saw tons of white men confidently expressing their support for Trump. Trump is different and he has a chance here. I do not believe he will win by a large margin but Virginia is in play. The proof is undeniable. Hillary is spending money here. Trump and Pence are spending time HERE. In the final days before the election the Republican ticket is spending its most precious commodity. If you can, get out and help, especially here in Fairfax. Fairfax County could have turned two statewide races in the past four years.
Pennsylvania is in play: I largely grew up in Pennsyltucky. This is the great “T” that makes up most of the land mass of Pennsylvania between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. This is a mixture of rust belt, rural, and small town America. This area reliably votes Republican, but this year they are over the top for Trump. Pittsburgh has no love for Clinton, and the Philadelphia suburbs have a distinct lack of enthusiasm. This is a Commonwealth that elected Rick Santorum statewide multiple times. Based on what I see plus critical looks at polling I think Trump has a better chance at Pennsylvania than Nevada.
Ballot measures:
Could the right to work ballot measure be written in a more confusing manner? Through a conglomeration of federal and state law, in non right-to-work states you must pay dues to unions to work in certain jobs. We do not have such a system here in Virginia. If you want it to stay that way, vote yes on Constitutional Amendment 1. If you like the perpetuation of unions, or just want to leave right-to-work as an open issue subject to change at the whim of the General Assembly vote no.
In Fairfax County Republican are fighting against a meals tax referendum. Democrats know deep down that this is about “diversifying revenue sources,” by targeting a subset of the commercial base and sapping nickels and dimes from regular people. They are selling it as a funding mechanism for schools. This is inherently deceptive. Even if all meals tax revenue went directly to funding schools there is nothing preventing the County from offsetting school funding from the general funds by any meals tax revenue. The schools receive a funding package every year based on projected needs far in excess of any meals tax revenue. Additionally, you inevitably have less of anything that you tax. There are two guarantees from the meals tax, 1. The County will receive some amount of additional revenue that is not actually guaranteed for schools, and 2. restaurants and sellers of prepared foods will see less total revenue resulting in less profits AND JOBS. The meals tax is a revenue solution for a spending problem. The Fairfax Board of Supervisors is trying to trick people into buying into higher taxes without suffering their own electoral consequences of voting to raise taxes themselves. Don’t fall for it. Vote no on the meals tax.
Cameras, the tool of the devil:
The State Board of Elections said you can use cameras in the voting place. This will increase transparency, and quite frankly, lead to a more enjoyable participatory democracy. The concerns of elections officials about disruption or control over the voting environment are overblown. The concerns about paying for votes are overblown (couldn’t this occur before ballot selfies were “legal?”). I witnessed just recently, devilish David Ramadan himself took a picture of part of his ballot and posted it on Facebook. There is one thing I have to say about using cameras in the polling place, it’s about time.
Final note: Those of you reading TBE are registered voters, I’m not worrying about you turning out to vote. Please take the time to help Trump get elected, support your Republican candidates, and support conservative positions on ballots measures by helping on Tuesday.
49 comments
The thing I will be encouraged about regarding the potential final outcome of the Trump vote count in Northern Virginia counties like Fairfax or even Loudoun is it may well reject once and for all and deliver to the landfill the constant Virginia political refrain which far too many Republican members of leadership and tentative candidates both seeking and holding office have been constantly using as the excuse for their lack of electoral success or appalling voting records in this region over the past decade.
You know the excuse we have all heard it repeated countless times – a Republican candidate is not demographically competitive in these major northern counties ringing the capital beltway due to the influence of the federal government worker. I have never bought this defense (more along the lines of rationalization) as first and foremost it has never been conclusive demonstrated by any of it’s proponents exactly what the voter base breakdown is regarding federal vs non federal workers in the area and second, and more importantly, it takes the false approach in my opinion that all government related workers are somehow stamped out of some left wing progressive cookie cutter voter mold that robotically proceeds to vote election in and election out for the proffered Democratic candidate.
Besides being rather insulting to the many political diverse federal and government related employees, presenting them as tools of the Democratic machine it’s just plain presumptive and dismissive. It by assumption largely dismisses the significant white and blue collar voting base in these regions that have no affiliation with government and often accordingly treats then as if they were invisible or just don’t matter to the Republican party.
It often reminds me of the Republican approach and continuing lament to it’s lack of appeal to the black voting population in Virginia that they (as well as the RNC) seem to always approach as some fictional monolithic voting block which it most certainly is not or ever has been. Trump has broken the seal on this long held myth that has provided cover and excuse for policy and candidates that not only don’t appeal to these urban voters of the region but as has been clearly demonstrated by the past decade of largely Republican electoral failure don’t appeal to the statewide voter much either.
There is a lesson to be learned here it appears to me, will it be internalized and results put into play to re-engineer the parties approach and candidate selection process to proceed along a path that Trump has shown can work if not outright succeed, that is the question to be answered in the near term. Frankly if you look at the early posturing and positioning of the parties 2017 state candidates I would have to say it looks like back to business as usual albeit with a severely damaged “voter excuse heat shield” but the same old attitude with prepackaged party candidates which first and foremost are not going to rock the boat, a priority that often appears far more critical then winning.
If Trump secures the national nomination we have step one, step two is to demonstrate he can, if not carry a failing Republican state like Virginia, at the very least show great political strength at it’s voting core, step three, and by far the most critical, is to begin a Trumpian like transformation of the Virginia Republican Party and open up the party process for new policy approaches and a younger participating membership in real positions of decision making at the state unit levels. Will this likely occur without some voter pressure, probably not, but just like the RNC was “made” to see the light the RPV can be “reorientated” to start to reclaim Republicanism in the state. The one thing these party brands never have or could truly internalize is in the end they don’t hold any true power, the power in the political arena in this nation is in the hands of the common voter, Let’s begin Jan. 20th 2017 that overdue transformation here in Virginia.
While I appreciate the thought, the numbers just don’t support what you’re saying. Places like Alexandria are the reason Democrats win in Virginia. It’s been that way for so long that it’s a joke in the general population. It’s been that way for so long that the series “The walking dead” used the stereotype of useless liberals in northern Virginia as the setting and characters for a whole season of shows.
Respectfully you have not and will have a very difficult time convincing me that Alexandria’s population of 1.5K (thousand) is the swing voting base in Virginia’s total voting base population, it’s rather a small contributor actually, compared to for example Fairfax’s 1.2M (million) or the total aggregate population of Northern Virginia estimated today at 2.6M (million) plus. I would say your attitude unsupported by facts or data substantiates my premise.
So … it’s actually rural areas that are causing all these Democratic wins … k, not places like Alexandria.
No, but it seems you like to put words in other’s mouths. Reread the comment it says what is written not what you want to ascribe to it.
No I really don’t. You basically said don’t give up on Nova. But why the hell not ? You say they aren’t all liberals, well, so what, not all of anybody is anything, all groups have exceptions, but they are still the reason Virginia goes blue.
http://files.umwblogs.org/blogs.dir/3752/files/2012/11/2012-results1.png
Democrats are the party of urban people. Period. Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Alexandria, Fairfax, Richmond, Charlottesville, Roanoke, etc. Every year they become even more focused on urban issues.
They are the party of welfare. Virtually everything they embrace ties back in someway to it. The entire SJW movement is based on it. It is most concentrated in the declining cities – and the democrats like to keep the cities in decline to trap the poor into voting for them. Now they want to globalize their failures by getting Hillary into the presidency.
I disagree. Back in the 1970’s and 80’s they were the party of welfare. Now they’re the party of urban people, urban culture, etc.
Take an issue like bathrooms for trans people. Do you think people near the TN border in a small town give two *&^%s about bathrooms for trans people ? I cannot think of anything more irrelevant than an issue like that, most country people don’t even know what trans MEANS. But for Democrats this is an important issue, why ? Because city people. First they take something like that an make an issue of it, then they point to rural people they now NOTHING ABOUT and make them the boogeyman, then they win elections with it – nevermind that the whole time rural people were just trying to figure out how to survive and couldn’t care less about it.
Frankly I’m not sure a Romney or McClain (for that matter) presidential vote distribution chart for Virginia or more specifically Northern Virginia proves a point one way or another to my comment. Romney and Trump are not only two VERY different candidates but represent two very different perspectives to the state voter base. I understand your position but you are using two completely different candidates policy wise (my point above) to justify a trend that you believe will continue.
Come back to TBE with this same chart updated for the Trump/Clinton 2016 election results and then we will have something to discuss that is germane to the comment and I would expect quite a different distribution picture then that above which really lays out the candidate failure issue of the party that I comment on above.
I will post after the election, but I think the map is going to be the same, it’s been the same for a decade.
People seem surprised Trump’s numbers are getting better and he’s almost even with Clinton, but what else can we expect ? It stopped being about candidates and policy a long time ago, now it’s just a culture war between two groups of people, they’re going to vote for their team no matter who is running. Even if they don’t like their candidate, they’ll vote against the other team’s candidate. That’s why the map keeps coming up the same way every election.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cb40b39f1533e674e19c8fb4b1e3d354843d460d3cdeb46d7e52ffdc394ce385.jpg
Sincerely,
‘The Develish’
David Ramadan
Video of Obama encouraging illegal aliens to vote exposed by Drudge. More Wikileaks on satanic blood cooking (Podesta), Hillary visits to Epstein’s orgy island, and pedophelia ring involving the Clintons and Huma/Weiner connection.
Trump support voting twice-a reality unlike your staged incidents
Clinton Foundation paid for Hillary wedding.
Guy who tried to attack Trump had accomplice. He was heavily involved with Democrat dirty tricks operations. See wikileaks.
No gun. No attack. No truth to your statement
Should start to see big changes in polls now…
I’ve never been in favor of a meals tax, but the loss of restaurant jobs and business story is horsecrap here in Danville.
Sales never declined and they continue to grow, even after the tax was passed here.
As the Danville City Council can raise their electric utility rates to compensate for their overspending and budget shortfalls at the drop of a hat, having a meal tax only proves how totally inept they are when it comes to managing the hard earned money that the taxpayers are required to give to them. If you don’t think one of the highest utility rates in the state on top of a meal tax is a problem, that is your prerogative. However, it doesn’t make any sense.
Totally wrong. Danville’s Utility Commission took bad advice from a rate consultant and failed to raise electric rates incrementally as they should have, causing the problem that led to a larger than normal increase last year.
The city is very well managed financially, never having a budget shortfall. In fact, there was a large surplus this past year. Oh yeah, the city’s bond rating got upgraded last year because of the good management.
In other words, you were full of horsecrap on everything you said.
A large surplus isn’t good management nor is it an indication of good government.
It was less than 1% of the total budget. That’s pretty good.
Back to the block list for you.
Really? Perhaps you can answer a few questions that are full of it, then. Considering Danville had to take $3.5 million from the Unreserved Fund Balance and another $1.4 million from the Reserved Fund Balance to get their tax revenues to equal their projected expenditures for their 2017 budget, what would you call that $4 million dollar mismanagement?
Does the DANVILLE Utility Commission fall under the authority of the city of Danville? Considering the DANVILLE Utility commission had a $10 million deficit in June 2016, who is responsible for that little mistake? You do know that the city of Danville received almost $10 million in electric revenues from the DANVILLE Utility Commission for their 2017 budget, right?
The thing that is truly scary with Danville’s overall higher utility rates that the DANVILLE Utility Commission has put in place, is the way they are socking it to businesses. Do you think those rates are conducive to the region’s economic development?
I would ask you about all them millions that Danville has paid back to the Virginia Tobacco Commission, but I think it is deep enough all ready.
http://www.danville-va.gov/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/1928
http://www.godanriver.com/news/danville/danville-utilities-seek-more-time-to-pay-off-deficit/article_8ec68ba6-4230-11e6-a9d1-1fd5634dec85.html
http://www.electricitylocal.com/states/virginia/danville/
http://www.electricitylocal.com/states/virginia/martinsville/
http://www.electricitylocal.com/states/virginia/south-boston/
http://www.electricitylocal.com/states/virginia/gretna/
http://www.electricitylocal.com/states/virginia/richmond/
http://www.electricitylocal.com/states/virginia/alexandria/
http://www.godanriver.com/news/danville/repayments-continue-to-flow-out-of-city-coffers/article_88435acc-42d9-11e5-8632-bf24c60b2f83.html
Let’s dance.
That didn’t happen in the way you described. The city chose to do that in advance to work on some capital projects and economic development incentives.
As stated above, the Utility Commission chose to follow the advice of a rate consultant to not incrementally raise electric rates when they should have. It was a bad decision and the results are self-evident. City Council wasn’t involved in that because there was nothing for them to approve/deny. The $10 million dollar deficit in the PCA fund was actually much worse the previous year, but the Utility Commission has been working on getting that back down without budgetary concerns. For more info on that and why it happened, I cordially invite you to read this BreakDown article that I published back in February.
http://www.southsidecentral.com/wordpress/2016/02/08/breakdown-danville-utilities-power-cost-adjustment-fund/
Nope. And neither did the Utility Commission & City Council. That’s why they approved a new program for the largest industrial customers to buy their own electricity on the open market and only use Danville Utilities for distribution. That happened this year and made Intertape quite happy, avoiding their veiled threat to close the plant.
Oh, I don’t mind. I’ve written about that before as well. All of that happened under the Jeremy Stratton area, and former (and now dead) City Manager Joe King failed to use the proper oversight on his activities. Everybody wanted to believe that a ribbon cutting every two months was real (including me) until the house of cards fell down. Stratton took off and King died before any investigation could be finished. Stratton didn’t commit any fraud… he just stated that he believed the companies he recruited were good ones. Danville hired a new economic development director and he set guidelines in place so that the sins of past would be impossible to pull off anymore. That’s led to Sky Valley Foods and Telvista’s expansion.
You’re welcome.
You tap dance marvelously! I would say any raise in rates or taxes, meal or otherwise only benefits one entity and that is a bigger government, but you clean it up so nicely. While I believe the outlook for Danville and the surrounding areas are improving, having one of the highest electrical rates in the state will continue to be a detriment to what can get accomplished.
By “tap dance”, you mean destroying your arguments completely with facts. And the record shall indicate that you didn’t mention that part of my reply at all.
Now I’m really believing you’re Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors member Ronald Scearce. True or false?
I could keep going back and forth with you, but the key ingredient to my argument is that Danville with a population of less than 43,000 has one of the highest utility rates in Virginia. By tap dance, I mean protecting the incompetence. While addressing the industrial rates that have been relaxed for a limited few, you neglected to address the commercial rates that are affecting small businesses which are the life blood of job creation. I can be whomever you want me to be, princess.
No. The point is that you made stuff up and I showed where you were full of horsecrap.
You’re not Pittsylvania County BoS member Ronald Scearce, are you?
Fairfax county is a location for Obama’s million child march from Central America to come to be with their illegal mothers so that the can eventually take advantage of the Democrats Amnesty which is inevitable when Clinton wins. In fact it is likely to be her first legislative goal. Along with that reality, it is a location for refugee resettlement.
Here is the cost to taxpayers:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/clinton-amnesty-tax-15000-per-household-1.2-trillion/article/2606575
This is reality, not your immigration fantasies.
Restaurants are a major source of jobs for illegal immigration. As such perhaps they should pay the cost. Maybe a Meals Tax is fair. Fairfax County schools are ALWAYS in the red… you can read your Washington Post to see how much of the school population is driven by foreign born.
Perhaps if the Chamber of Commerce at all its levels had to pay for the cost of their cheap labor they wouldn’t be so keen for it.
Back in the day the grocery store had a bunch of children who worked at the end of the checkout who would bag groceries and take the groceries out to the customer’s car for tips. It wasn’t a huge amount of money, but it added up, and for someone the age of about 10 or 12 years old it was the perfect introduction to capitalism.
That job no longer exists.
Why doesn’t it exist ?
Is it because people who are shopping for groceries don’t like having their groceries loaded into the back of their vehicle ? Probably not.
Is it because young people don’t like making money ? Probably not.
Is it because grocery store owners don’t like having brats hanging around the store soaking their customers for tips ? Probably not.
The reason the job doesn’t exist anymore is because its illegal, and it has been made unprofitable, and an administrative hassle. It’s illegal because of child labor laws. It’s unprofitable because of minimum wage requirements. It’s an administrative hassle because now you’d have to “hire” the children as employees and deal with a pile of paperwork, insurance requirements, etc.
Perfectly good jobs, now gone, thanks to government meddling.
How many other jobs has red tape, regulation, and taxes destroyed ? You say it hasn’t negatively affected restaurants where you live because there are more of them, but you don’t really know how many there would have been without the tax increase.
Pretty good jobs? Working for tips in the 40s and 50s worked but this is 2016?
I had three jobs when I was young that no longer exist, jobs that are simply gone, children aren’t allowed to do those jobs anymore. The world is worse for it.
Children don’t work in factories in the US anymore. Do you long for those days also?
Communists want everything to be owned by the state, do you long for Gulags ?
(see how lame it is to try to bait people with stupid questions)
Kids still work in the ghettoes. Only they sell drugs, commit crimes, and provide prostitution services. Folks like SD would rather have that than a kid taking out the groceries, mowing the lawns, helping shovel snow, or doing other good things that are beneath a child.
Now the children are enslaved out of sight in Chinese factories rather than allowed to work at least part time in American factories. Oh, what factories, Obama and Clinton got rid of them as they were too messy.
The president got rid of factories? At least your UFO friends have safe places to land
70,000 at latest count. Started with Bill Clinton and NAFTA, and here we are. Oh, you can look up the 70,000 as you have a computer and internet access.
Here is a little math for you. At a minimum, each factory would employ 10 people up to 100. That means between 700,000 and 7 million employed. For each individual employed, there are about 10 others that provide such things as health, food, clothing, etc. Thus, somewhere between 7 million and 70 million people are out of the workforce thanks to this loss of factories. The current productive people not in the workforce is about 95 million people, labor force participation rate information.
Are you saying that closing factories is the not the result of market forces? Rather it is a plan by the Democrats to take over the world? Do you think it was the Jews or the Muslims that are behind this? This is why people of worried about Trump – not so much because of him but because of you
He makes an argument and then you counter with bullshit. Who has the tinfoil hat?
OK. Let’s expose everyone to market forces. No more entitlement programs. No more EBT cards. No section 8 housing. No affirmative action programs, diversity set asides. Everyone exists on their own ability.
What does that have to do with the claim that Clinton and Obama shut down factories? Instead of assigning blame to the rich making laws and regulations to get richer, you blame only democratic presidents as if they controlled the world. I don’t get it. What about congress being the ones to pass laws? What about lobbyists pushing aganedas. What about campaign finances that give certain business advatanges over others? No. you want to neglect all those forced and put the blame on Obama? Makes no sense
But stupid people post stupid things all the time. Like they long for the gold old days of 60 years ago
It’s too bad you had to resort to “you’re a poo poo head”, we might have had a meaningful discussion, even if you are just trolling.
you post about stupid questions and Gulags and then about meaningful discussions – not sure how you connect those two thoughts – maybe you should go back to delivering papers and shining shoes like you did in the good old days
I’ll be so glad when this election is over so you guy scan go find something better to do …
One thing I notice is that restaurants go in and out of business quite regularly. They are not a good measure of the health of the economy at all.
You sound like McDonnell. The money consumers spend on a meals tax could be better spent on something made in Communist China, such as a TV set, to hang on the wall in the new house built by illegal immigrants. Or, perhaps a new car made in Mexico, or, Communist China, or Korea, to drive to their WalMart job, stocking shelves with Communist made goodies??
What money goes back into the economy on a hamburger tax? Money to unclog the sewers?
Trump, Morrissey, Brat!
Each desrves the others.
Obama, Hillary, BillC, Weiner. Birds of a perverted feather hanging together.