For the first time in history, the United States no longer has a Triple A credit rating. The insecurity that has exploded throughout the world financial markets is a disaster. No one knows where we’re headed because we’ve never been here before. To think that we can just cut spending without raising revenue is insane. If you think things are bad now, just wait a few months.

Who is to blame? All of us are because we elected these bastards.

President Obama and the Democrats are stupid because they thought they could negotiate with the other side in good faith. Obama figured that everyone wants a bipartisan agreement with a balanced approach that would begin to fix the mess the previous administration has gotten us into. I’m sure he looked forward to facing the cameras with John “Boo Hoo” Boehner and Harry Reid at his side for a comforting kumbaya moment that showed that yes, Virginia, we can all get along. Geezus, how stupid can he be?

The day after the presidential election, Obama’s opponents began working to ensure his administration would fail. And fail it has. Obama squandered all the political capital he had because he wanted everyone to like him. Memo to the President: You brought a knife to a gunfight. These people hate your guts, and if you think trying to out-Republican the Republicans by abandoning the promises you made to those who voted for you is going to work, you’re delusional. The so-called compromise you signed last week was no compromise. You just bent over and grabbed your ankles.

The Republicans and their sixty member Tea Bagging caucus are beyond stupid. Their political posturing created a false “emergency” that has put the economic security of every single American at risk just to prove who has the biggest dick. Have a mortgage, credit card, car or student loan? You’re fucked. Interest rates are going to rise. Unemployed, on Social Security, need Medicare or Medicaid, or have a retirement account? Good damn luck. The safety net is now on the chopping block. This new super committee that will decide how the government will spend our money can now start chopping entitlement programs. This doesn’t apply to members of Congress, naturally. All they have to do is serve one term and they have a generous guaranteed retirement that includes free medical insurance.

Bye the way, Social Security is NOT an entitlement. It’s a goddamn CONTRACT made between the federal government and every person who has paid into it. But hey, contracts no longer mean jack as far as these assholes are concerned. Unless, of course, the contract means that corporations and the richest 1% pay no taxes, or we continue to pay 4,000,000,000.00 dollars annually in subsidies to the oil companies. Oh, in case you were wondering, EVERY SINGLE MEMBER OF CONGRESS is in that 1%. Our carpetbagging congressman Morgan Griffith voted against the “compromise” because he didn’t think it went far enough.

Where do we go from here? Beats the shit out of me.

Dear Wythe Notes,
The public hearing on the budget is May 25,2011 @7PM. Taxes are going up/$ is going down/it is impartitive that we be vigiliant about what the county is spending. Cas in point: the county Depts are spending over $25,000 PER YEAR in “DUES” & the Joint Industrial Developement Agency is putting out over $25,000, so together that’s over $50 grand to DUES to state & national entities—–for what???? Would the county Dissolve if we had a hiatus for a year & didn’t pay DUES??? Would “they “(whomever all these dues go to) throw the judge off the bench? Well, let’s ask & all whole lot of other ?’s to. Thurdsay, May 25 @7PM. See you there.

Submitted on 2011/04/10 at 4:50 pm
Local Wythe Tea party, which by the way is bi partisan, is hosting a Candidates nite in June (date TBA). All candidates are invited to give their “speal” & ? ‘s can than be directed to them.
This will be a perfect forum to ask pertinent questions about the goings on in our county, answers can be documented & we can “hold their feet to the fire” whomever gets elected. The June date will be forthcomming ASAP. I have made a written request that a copy of the preliminary budget be made available ,perhaps at the library, before the public hearing on it. I will ask again at the 4/12 BOS meeting. After 2 requests & did get a copy of the 2010/2011 county budget at a cost of $51.00. We needed this to compare to what they’re going to do for 2011/2012. You will be VERY surprised to know that WE are giving our BOS FULL MEDICAL coverage to the tune of $38,304/that’s pretty good for a part time job! And they give away $15,600 of your tax money to Civic organizations AND the pay DUES to (?) for $12,000. They’re are LOTS of other interesting ??????? expenditures such as the LINE ITEM in the administrators budget that reads “FRINGE BENEFITS” @ $30,000.
There truly are shanigans going on & we cann’t be asleep at the wheel . We need folks to come to meetings,make a chain, so they know we’re watchin’ em.

Submitted on 2011/03/24 at 7:59 am
Just a not about Prpgress Pk. In the Jan. minutes that were finally published last week, all the BOS voted NOT to appropreiate almost $700,000 for “drainage’. Than in March they voted to do it. So at the meeting 3/22 I asked them why they had changed their minds? Blank-nobody knew why. They asked Dalton & he didn’t know why! Now folks, if you spent $700grand would you remember what on?????
Also the budget meeting are commin’ up/well you might forget about going because they won’t let you ask or say a peep(they told me I couldn’t at last weeks meeting). So let’s just bug the hell out of them for a copy of the prelim budget before the public hearing so we can question their proposed expenditures, like the $30,000 for “fringe” benefits.

Tuesday night’s meeting of the Wythe County Board of Supervisors was an interesting civics lesson. It was also a display of pure arrogance and lack of compassion. I was both saddened and outraged.

If I were Cellell Dalton or Stephen Bear, I would be really pissed off right now. Particularly if I were Mr. Dalton. He should be remembered as the man who brought a safe water system to our region and did it in such a way that the County will greatly profit from it in the future. Instead, he and Mr. Bear find themselves the focus of a controversy that is probably not of their making. I doubt that either of them actively lobbied for the salary increases they are scheduled to receive beginning March 1, but I don’t know that for sure. I think this was another in a series of boneheaded moves by the County Board of Supervisors.

I do know this. Appearance is everything.

According to the statistics available from the Virginia Counties Association (VaCA) and the National Associations of County Administrators (NACA), both men, even after the salary increases, will still be paid below the average of their peers in comparably sized counties across both the state and the nation. Both men are also working below contract. Neither of them is making what they were contractually promised by the County.

I believe both of these men are honest, hard-working public servants who, in a perfect world, deserve to be fairly compensated. But this is not a perfect world, this is Wythe County, and we are going through hard times. Raises of 11% and 18% for two people who are already making 2 and 3 times the average income of the families in this county are unconscionable.

Mr. Dalton and Mr. Bear should refuse these raises.

I’ll have my take on what actually happened Tuesday night on my next post.

At this point though, the nitwits on the Board went off the rails. They decided that to be fair, Stephan Bear, the other Assistant Administrator should be paid the same as Ms. Shank, which required an 18% raise for Mr. Bear. Oh, and to keep the pay differential (huh?) the same as it is now, County Administrator Cellell Dalton will get an 11% raise.

WTF? Are these people smoking dope? Who among you thinks life is fair? Who among you has gotten any raise, much less one of 18%? What part of the County Code requires a specific pay differential between the Administrator and Assistant Administrator(s)?

No organization that I’ve ever heard of, whether it be business or government, pays the same salary to executives with the same title. Executive pay is determined by a number of factors: education, experience, and a potential hire’s ability to negotiate.

Folks, this deal stinks, and the Board knows it. And they knew it at the time they made it. The job upgrade and the raises will cost $49,000 annually. I don’t know the specifics of the costs of any of the benefit packages these three individuals receive, but the rule of thumb is around 30%, so the actual cost is more like $68,000 per annum. The Board assures us that this will not require any tax increase or the loss of any program. The money will come from the general fund. Duh. The sounds you hear are the bullshit detectors going off all over the county. What do they plan to do, play the Lottery? The general fund is made up of OUR tax dollars.

Supervisor Gary Houseman looked like a deer in head lights when interviewed by a reporter from Channel 10. He justified the Board’s move by sputtering something to the effect that “if” we could get the interest rates on our bonds down just a little it would save the taxpayers thousands of dollars in the future. If? Gary, dude, if a frog had wings it would get more pigeon pussy. You damn sure better hope we get a better rate.

Bucky Sharitz, the chairman of our brain trust, said “it is difficult to say what the funds in the general budget would have been used for otherwise.” I can think of a few things. Sheriff Doug King’s deputies haven’t had a raise in four years. The Lead Mines Rescue Squad might not have to begin charging for transport. Those two are just off the top of my head. Given a little time, I can probably come up with a couple of hundred organizations that could use an extra 68 grand a year.

I’d like to tip my hat to reporter Amanda Evans and The Wytheville Enterprise for breaking this story. I hope she stays with it because there are a lot more questions that need to be answered. If you look at some of the articles in the Carroll News, Ms. Shank is capable of doing both the job she is being hired for and that of Stephen Bear. So why does the county need to continue employing Mr. Bear? I have it on pretty good authority that Mr. Dalton plans to retire when his contract is up in two years. Was this some kind of backroom end play to boost his retirement package and head off the kind of controversy that occurred when the Town Manager of Christiansburg left last year? Why does Wythe County, which has less geographic area and a smaller population, have an operating budget that is over 2½ times that of Carroll County? And if the county is in such bad shape, who let it get this way? The Board of Rubber Stampers or Cellell Dalton?

Regardless of whether this whole mess is a result of ineptitude, or, and I truly hope not, corruption, an election is coming in November. If one thing is true about our citizens, it is this: They not only get mad; they get even.

POSTNOTE

(added 2/8/11)

The Wythe County Board of Supervisors will meet tonight, February 8 at 7:00 pm in the Administration Building, 340 Sixth Street. Citizen’s Time begins directly after the Invocation. I urge county residents to come voice their opinion.

Our Neo-Nazi Attorney General is still at it. Even though an Albemarle County judge ruled last August that the far rightwing asshole failed to make his case, and there was NO reason to suspect former UVA Professor Michael Mann of committing fraud, Ken “The Coochieman” Cuccinelli is trying once again to force The University of Virginia to turn over documents relating to Dr. Mann’s research into global warning.

When is this stupid shit going to stop?

Cuccinelli, along with Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and all the other far right kooks have an agenda that, among other things, denies that global warming is a problem.

Hellooooooooooo….the Polar Ice Caps are melting you stupid fucker. The ocean waters are rising. If this idiot Cuccinelli has his way, one day Wythe County will have beach front property.

Dr. Mann left UVA eleven years ago. His research is widely accepted throughout the scientific community. Cuccinelli continues to pursue this issue (claiming fraudulent use of taxpayer dollars) in an attempt to discredit Mann’s findings. The AG’s office has already spent more of our money, yours and mine, than the amount of the original research grant.

Cuccinelli has long accepted campaign funds from Massey Energy, the main perpetrator of the mountaintop removal (MTR) style of coal mining in Virginia. We in Appalachia have little or no say so in the destruction of our environment, or the health and welfare of our citizens. Under the guise of preserving jobs (we’re only talking about 14,000 jobs at most over the next decade,) people like Cuccinelli will not be satisfied until our beautiful mountains consist of nothing more than a picture in some future history book. This motherfucker has to be stopped.

Make no bones about it. Cuccinelli views the Attorney General’s Office as a stepping stone. He sees himself one day as governor, senator, or, god forbid, president.

Where is Lee Harvey Oswald now that we really need him?

The answer is c. A newspaper. If you answered b. Tits on a bull, then you obviously don’t read the Wytheville Enterprise. It has a lot more in common with tits on a bull than it does with a newspaper.

I realize that a small town newspaper is not the Washington Post or the New York Times, and that running such a newspaper can be difficult at times. The editor has to cater to his advertisers and he has to be careful not to piss off the powers that be. But give me a freakin’ break. It’s high time that Jeffrey Simmons and Wayne Quesenberry remember that they work for a NEWSpaper and not some high school vanity throw away. The lead story in the current edition should be NEWS, not a fawning advertisement for a musical comedy starring a vacuous college student at a third rate college. Particularly when there was a far more important story. At least you would think that the arrest of two youth football coaches for selling drugs is more important. One of the coaches, Robert Mills, was arrested for selling while he was coaching the kids in a practice at an elementary school. But then again, maybe the semi-revealing photograph of the college student’s cleavage was all they were interested in to begin with, and the accompanying story was just an excuse to run the picture.

Guys, stop phoning it in and do your damn job.

Today’s post was supposed to be about the wonderful time that Anne and I had at the Healthy Foods Foundations Conference at The Ft. Chiswell Mansion this past Saturday. And I promise the next one will deal with that. But right now I’m really pissed off, and I have to get some of this stuff off my chest before my head explodes. I’m a rather profane person and when I’m angry my language tends to reflect it. I apologize to anyone I may offend. I’ve decided to establish the KISS MY ASS awards for the individuals and institutions who are either fucking us outright or are just too stupid to live.

The KIMME (KMA)

In no particular order, the winners are:

Ken Cuccinelli, the esteemed Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Virginia. This guy is a fucking moron and one of the main reasons I left the Republican Party. He was our State Senator when we lived in Fairfax County. It was bad enough when he directed colleges NOT to protect the rights of homosexuals (even our dumbass governor backed away from that one), or that he was the first AG to file suit over recently passsed health care reform, now this dildo wants to change the state seal to cover Lady Virtus’ left tit. Virginia is becoming a national laughing stock  because of this clown.

Ken Cuccinelli: KISS MY ASS

British Petroleum. Before it’s all over, this company is going to be on everyone’s shit list. This disaster may be the death knell for New Orleans and a lot of the Gulf Coast. 69% of the WORLD’S shellfish come from this area. Under the worst case scenario the oil could eventually affect the East Coast shoreline. This company knew the dangers and failed to properly outline them when they were first granted drilling rights. And they continued to hide the facts. I hope you enjoyed your last meal of shrimp and oysters and blue crabs (just to name a few) because shortly, what little product left will be so expensive that only oil company executives and the banking and Wall Street thieves will  be able to afford them. The next asshole who says to me “Drill Baby Drill” in regard to offshore drilling along Virginia’s coastline is going to need major dental work.

British Petroleum: KISS MY ASS

I purchased these two bags of charcoal Saturday at the same time for the same price. The larger bag on the left contains LESS charcoal than the smaller bag on the right. Kingsford, like a lot of our “trusted” corporations like Kellogg and General Mills, pull this bait and switch bullshit all the time. They know that most shoppers are in too much of a hurry to read the fine print. In many, many cases the larger the container, the more expensive the per unit cost. So to Kingsford and all the other greedy corporations: KISS MY ASS.

And finally, to the President, Congress, State Governments, the Democrat and Republican parties, the banks, Wall Street, the insurance companies, the unions,the lawyers (geezus don’t get me started on them),  the churches, the teabaggers, and all the other worthless, bigoted, low-down, cheating asshole cocksuckers who have sold this once great country down the river:

KISS MY ASS

Thank You.

Common sense is a quality that is rapidly disappearing in this country thanks in due part to political correctness, government regulation, sleazy politics, religious zealotry, litigation, and just plain stupidity. Sorry to break it to you Sarah Palin, but your child is RETARDED! According to the 2002 edition of the Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary, the word is defined as, “slow or limited in intellectual or emotional development: characterized by mental retardation.” Downs Syndrome is one of the milder forms of mental retardation. Your attempt to make political hay out of someone else’s use of the word in a private meeting is not only sleazy political posturing; it is also RETARDED. Sorry folks, that woman just pisses me off, and I had to get it off my chest. What this post is actually about is the growing lack of common sense when it comes to the purchase of cigarettes and tobacco products by adults.

This morning while standing in the checkout line at the Ft. Chiswell FOOD COUNTRY USA, I witnessed a teenage clerk, who is not old enough to purchase tobacco products herself, send the woman in front of me, who was obviously in her late 60s or early 70s, back out into the cold to retrieve her driver’s license from her car to prove she was over 18. The same thing happened to me a couple of months ago in the same store. When my turn to checkout came, I asked the clerk why she did that, and she told me that an employee had been caught last year in an undercover sting selling cigarettes to an underage person and now all employees were required to card EVERYONE or they would be sent home.

The other day when I purchased my weekly carton at another establishment, the cash register pinged and the clerk, who was in her 40s, looked at my gray hair, laughed and said, “I’m sorry, it does that when we sell cigarettes. I guess you’re over 18.” I laughed and relayed my previous experience at Food Country to her. She then told me of an even more outrageous experience. Her 84-year-old mother, who uses a walker, was unable to produce a driver’s license because she hasn’t driven in years, was not allowed to purchase a pack because she had no way of proving her age. AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGH! My head is going to explode!

I understand that smoking is a disgusting and dangerous habit. It is not only harmful to oneself, but to those around you. It truly saddens me when I see a young person light up, and I don’t have a problem with the recently passed ban on smoking in restaurants and other public buildings. But the hysteria surrounding smoking has gone too far. Over a decade ago, Del Mar, California, banned smoking anywhere in town including one’s private home. People passing thru Del Mar can be fined for smoking in their own car. But again, I digress.

This is about common sense and the lack thereof. I understand that FOOD COUNTRY USA must protect its corporate self from employees who knowingly or unknowingly sell cigarettes to minors. But an 84 year-old woman in a walker is obviously not a minor. In other areas of Virginia, it is common to see signs that read, “We card everyone under 25.” Food Country might want to consider changing their policy to that. Folks in their 30s and 40s might even be flattered when asked to produce ID, and a sweet-looking little ol’ granny can buy her damned coffin nails in peace.

Folks, this has got to stop. The money for roadside clean-up was eliminated from the state budget this year. So the crap you throw out your window, or that blows off the back of your truck, or whatever will stay there. It’s disgusting. Not even an animal fouls its own nest, and Wythe County is our collective nest. A lot of this trash will end up in our waterways endangering the health and welfare of humans and animals alike. The glass bottles that are part of the Blevins’ roadside gift will remain in the environment FOREVER!

Not only is littering disgusting, it’s illegal and down right stupid. In the Blevins’ case, the envelopes with their names and address on them constitute prima facie evidence of guilt. There is also this little problem going around called identity theft. Ever hear of it?

So Mr. and Mrs. Blevins if you read this or if someone who knows you reads this, COME AND PICK UP YOUR DAMN TRASH. The Blevins’ phone number by-the-way, is (276)637-6145. Have a nice day.