Lt. Gov. Bolling: "Virginia's financial Bull Run?"

By Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling
Washington Times - June 28, 2009

We learned last week that Virginia will be facing another budget shortfall in the current fiscal year. Though the news seemed to surprise many people, it should not surprise anyone.

Over the past three years, Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine has attempted to balance the state budget through overly optimistic revenue projections, the use of one-time money to pay for ongoing programs, an excessive use of state debt, federal bailout dollars and raids on the rainy-day fund.

The result has been predictable. Over a three-year period, we have experienced more than $5 billion in budget shortfalls, with more on the way, and I have no doubt that we will deplete the state's rainy-day fund by the time this governor leaves office.

In the current fiscal year, it appears as though we will miss our revenue projections once again. The result could be another budget shortfall of $300 million or more, but this is just the beginning of what well may be a long-term problem.

On July 1, we will start another budget year, fiscal 2009-10. The new budget is only "balanced" because it assumes revenue growth of 4 percent. Frankly, this Republican thinks it is very unlikely that our state's economy and subsequent tax collections will grow by 4 percent in the next 12 months.

If we fail to meet this revenue projection, we will face another budget shortfall in 2010. For each 1 percent that we miss our revenue projection, the shortfall will be $170 million.

But once again, this is just the beginning of a larger problem.

When the General Assembly returns to Richmond in 2010, it will not only have to make amendments to the state budget for fiscal 2009-10, it also will have to adopt a new state budget for the 2010-2012 biennium. That budget process could be the most difficult one of all.

Earlier this year, the governor told us we were facing a budget shortfall of $3.7 billion. To close this budget shortfall, we were looking at significant spending reductions in most state agencies.

Fortunately, most of these budget cuts were avoided when Virginia received an estimated $4.8 billion from the federal stimulus package. While this enabled us to avoid spending reductions this year, it was a short-term solution to a long-term problem.

Unfortunately, the federal stimulus dollars will expire in September of 2011, and most of the budget shortfalls we were facing earlier this year will return. So, our current budget shortfalls could pale in comparison to the shortfalls in the next biennial budget.

The next governor will likely inherit a financial mess, and we will have to be guided by core principles if we are going to solve this problem the right way.

The basic problem in Richmond is that we are spending more money than we are taking in, and we cannot continue to do that. We cannot continue to balance our budgets through gimmicks. That is not how we became the best-managed state in the nation, and it is not how we earned a AAA bond rating.

We have to restore fiscal integrity in Virginia's state government. That means basing our budgets on realistic revenue projections and reducing spending to match the revenues that are available to pay for it.

Restoring fiscal integrity to our budget process will not be easy. It will require us to set strict budget priorities and focus our spending decisions on the core responsibilities of state government.

These are the same difficult decisions families and businesses have to make in challenging economic times, and state government must do the same thing.

We also must aggressively pursue business-friendly policies that create new jobs for Virginians. A growing economy, coupled with spending restraint, is the best way to increase state revenues and close our budget shortfall.

The only other alternative is to enact massive tax increases on families and businesses, and have no doubt, that is exactly what some will propose. Raising taxes during a recession would kill jobs. That is the wrong approach at the wrong time.

Restoring fiscal integrity to state government and creating new jobs will be the most significant issues facing Virginia for the next several years. It should be at the core of the debate this year as we will elect our next governor and lieutenant governor and all 100 members of the House of Delegates.

To facilitate this debate, Mr. Kaine should be very forthright about the magnitude of this problem and not fall prey to the temptation to mask the problem until after the November elections.

Likewise, we should require every candidate for governor, lieutenant governor and the House of Delegates to tell us if he or she would raise taxes or reduce spending and create jobs to solve this problem.

Bill Bolling, a Republican, is the lieutenant governor of Virginia.

Health care: AFP wants government to MYOB

From Tim Phillips, President of Americans For Prosperity....

Throughout this challenging year you have responded when we've asked you to help defend our freedoms.

Now, I'm asking you again. The issue is health care. The urgency is high because legislation is moving now in Congress. President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and MoveOn.org want legislation that will:

- create a massive new government health plan costing us over $1.6 trillion;
- raise taxes on Americans across the board;
- force us to buy the type of insurance the government says we should;
- and take away our freedoms to decide which treatments and doctors are best for our families.

So, Americans for Prosperity is getting involved in a big way. But to be successful, we need your help.

Will you take a moment to send this message to Congress: KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF OUR HEALTH CARE!

Visit Patients First to sign our petition and contact your legislators. Send it on to friends. Let Congress know we won’t stop until our rights and freedoms are protected. We need 500,000 Americans to sign this petition that we'll send to Congress this summer. Please be one of the first to sign.

President Obama promised us on the campaign trail that there would be no new tax increases for anyone making less than $250,000 a year. But now he and members of Congress are talking about taxing soda and alcohol – beverages that are hardly confined to the super-wealthy!

They’re talking about taxing YOUR health benefits to pay for this government takeover of health care, too. And that’s not even counting the global warming-driven energy tax – “cap-and-trade” – which has been floated to help pay for health care as well.

But, it’s not just more of our money (Sen. Kennedy’s bill has been estimated to cost $4 trillion over 10 years). It’s also about our freedom. The freedom to make health care decisions for our families – something that is precious, something we cannot allow the government to take away from us.

My wife, Julie, and I have four precious children. We cannot imagine the government stepping in and dictating to us what treatments will be covered by insurance should (God forbid) they become sick. But, that's exactly what's at stake.

Please join your fellow Americans for Prosperity activists in urging Congress and the president to put Patients First in health reform. Sign the petition now at and tell President Obama and Speaker Pelosi to KEEP THEIR HANDS OFF OUR HEALTH CARE.

Sincerely,

Tim Phillips

AFP fighting universal health care

From Tim Phillips, President of Americans for Prosperity....

Last night I spoke at the Arkansas Tea Party event in Little Rock, Arkansas. The folks there held a great event with hundreds of fired up citizens keeping the pressure on Washington politicians to rein in spending and stop the tax increases on our families and businesses.

AFPF's Patients United Now team, led by Teresa Crossland-Okee, handed out cold water and educational materials to activists on a hot, humid evening.

Things were hotter for Senator Lincoln who continues to stay on the fence when it comes to the job killing energy tax called "Cap-and-Trade." Senator Lincoln also refuses to rule out supporting President's Obama's government health care takeover that will mean a government bureaucrat between patients and their doctors, long lines for doctor's appointments, and worst of all medical procedures DENIED based on age or chronic illnesses.

As we head into a crucial summer for our economic freedoms these two issues dominate the landscape:

1. Will our health care system be taken over by the government; and
2. Will the biggest job-killing, energy tax in American history pass as legislation called "Cap-and-Trade."

You and I have at most two months before the decisive battles in the United States Senate this September.

We've got to be ready for an all-out effort to win these two vital issues.

Next week, our AFP team will be back on the road with the anti Cap-and-Trade Hot Air Tour in Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska. For details on the Hot Air Tour and to learn more about Cap-and-Trade visit CostofHotAir.com.

Events like last night's Arkansas Tea Party event in Little Rock tell me our side is getting ready. But, we need to do so much more.

Will you take two steps to help us get ready for the decisive September Senate battle over Cap-and-Trade and health care?

Urge your representatives to sign our No Climate Tax Pledge, and let your elected officials know that you're watching how they vote on hidden energy taxes.

You can also tell your representatives to Vote NO on any bill that puts bureaucrats before patients.

One last thing, remember that the Obama-Pelosi $1 trillion "stimulus" we fought so hard to defeat? President Obama and Speaker Pelosi promised the massive spending bill would create jobs and turn around our economy.

Did you see Vice President Joe Biden on NBC's Meet the Press this past Sunday when he was asked why so many jobs were still being lost even months AFTER the Stimulus bill passed?

Biden actually said, "Everyone guessed wrong."

Think about it. They spend $1 trillion that we don't have -- taking us deeper into debt -- while promising Americans that their spending binge would "create jobs." Then, when job losses mount despite the massive spending, they shrug their shoulders and say, "Well we all guessed wrong..."

W've got to make sure that when it comes to health care and Cap-and-Trade we remind our fellow citizens that our opponents "guessed wrong" on the Stimulus and they're "guessing wrong" again!

Thanks for all you are doing. But, much more lies ahead.

I hope to see some of you next week in Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska.

P.S. Join me on Facebook and Twitter as we build the best grassroots network in the national defending our freedoms.

Brigitte Gabriel know of which she speaks. As her introduction say at Act! for America, "I founded ACT! for America because Islamic militants have declared war on America. I know what this means. For years, I witnessed first-hand how brutally jihadists treat non-Muslims. We are in for the fight of our lives and we must ACT! - before it's too late."

Ms. Gabriel is a phenomenal speaker and is neither Republican nor Democrat. She is American. She is also the New York Times bestselling author of They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It. She is the founder and president of ACT! for America.

Here is her Open Letter to President Obama.

Dear Mr. President,

You face difficult challenges in matters such as achieving peace in the Middle East and protecting America from the threat of radical Islam and terrorism. These are challenges that have vexed past presidents, going as far back as our second president, John Adams. I have no doubt you appreciate both the gravity of these challenges and the enormous obstacles that exist to solving them.

I also have no doubt that you and your staff understood that, no matter what you said in your speech last Thursday in Cairo, there would be those who would take issue with you. That is always the case when attempting to solve problems that are as deep and emotionally-laden as these challenges are.

I am assuming it is your sincere hope that the approach you have chosen to take, as evidenced by what I’m sure was a carefully crafted speech, will ultimately prove successful. However, it pains me to say this sir, but, while you said in your speech that you are a “student of history,” it is abundantly clear that, in these matters, you do not know history and thus, as Santayana noted, you are doomed to repeat it. In doing so your efforts, however well-intentioned they may be, will not produce what you profess to hope they will produce.

A wise man once said that if you start with the wrong assumptions, no matter how logical your reasoning is, you will end up with the wrong conclusion. With all due respect Mr. President, you are starting with certain assumptions that are unsupported by history and an objective study of the ideology of political Islam.

You began in your speech by asserting that “tensions” exist between the United States and Muslims around the world, which, of course, is correct. Unfortunately, you then proceeded, incorrectly, to lay virtually all the blame for these tensions at the feet of America and the West. You blamed western colonialism, the Cold War, and even modernity and globalism.

A student of American history, who is not trying to reconstruct it to fit a modern politically correct narrative, would state that tensions between America and Muslims began with the unprovoked, four-decades long assault by the Muslim Barbary pirates against American shipping in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. I find it telling that you mentioned the Treaty of Tripoli in your speech but ignored the circumstances that led to it. That treaty was but one of numerous attempts by the United States to achieve peace with the jihadists of the Barbary Coast who were attacking our shipping and killing and enslaving our citizens and our soldiers – and who by their own admission were doing so to fulfill the call to jihad.

These jihadists were not acting to protest American foreign policy, which was decidedly isolationist, and there was no state of Israel to scapegoat. They were doing what countless Islamic jihadists have done throughout history – acting upon the hundreds of passages in the Qur’an and the Hadith that call upon faithful Muslims to kill, conquer or subjugate the infidel.

A student of world history would know that, for all the acknowledged evils of Western colonialism, these evils pale in comparison to the nearly 14 centuries of Islamic colonialism that began in Arabia under the leadership of Mohammed. The student of history would know that Islamic forces eradicated all Jewish and Christian presence from Arabia after Mohammed’s death, and then succeeded in conquering all of North Africa, most of the Middle East, much of Asia Minor, and significant portions of Europe and India – eventually creating an empire larger than Rome’s was at its peak.

The number of dead and enslaved during these many centuries of Islamic imperial conquest and colonialism have been estimated to total more than 300 million. What’s more, the wealth of many of the conquered nations and cultures was plundered by the Islamic conquerors, and millions of millions of non-Muslims who did survive were forced to pay onerous taxes, such as the “jizya,” a humiliation tax to the Islamic caliphs. Indeed, in some areas Christians and Jews were made to wear a receipt for the jizya around their neck as a mark of their dishonor.

These facts have not been invented by Christian or Jewish historical revisionists, but were chronicled by Muslim eyewitnesses throughout the past 14 centuries and are available to be researched by any person seeking an objective understanding of how Islam spread throughout the world.

You say in your speech that we must squarely face the tensions that exist between America and the Muslim world. That is a laudable notion with which I agree, but by casting Islam as the historical victim and the West (and by implication, America) as the aggressor, you do not face these tensions squarely, but alleviate the Muslim world from coming to grips with the jihadist ideology embedded in its holy books and acted upon for 1,400 years.

Even worse, you empower and embolden militant Islamists who regard your gestures as signs of weakness and capitulation.

The issue is not that all Muslims are terrorists or radicals or extremists. We all know that the majority of Muslims are not. We also know that many peace-loving Muslims are victims of Islamist violence.

The issue is this: what drives hundreds of millions of Muslims worldwide to call for the death of Jews?

What drives millions of Muslims to riot, destroy property, and take innocent lives in reaction to the Danish cartoons?

What drives tens of thousands of Muslims to demand the execution of a British teacher whose only “crime” was allowing her students to name their teddy bears “Mohammed”?

What drives countless Muslims worldwide to actively participate in, or fund, or provide nurture to, terrorist organizations?

What drives Muslims in mosques in America to proclaim and distribute materials that call for hatred of and the destruction of infidels?

What drives entire Islamic countries to prohibit the building of a Christian church or synagogue?

To assume, as you apparently do, that what drives these actions is not an ideology embedded in the holy books of Islam, but rather other “root causes,” most of which you lay at the feet of America and the West, is at best naïve and at worst dangerous.

Lastly, I must address your statement that “Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance.” Unfortunately, the examples you gave are the exception rather than the rule.

Historically speaking, I seriously doubt the Egyptian Copts, the Lebanese Maronites, the Christians in Bethlehem, the Assyrians, the Hindus, the Jews, and many others who have been persecuted by Islamic violence and supremacism, would agree with your assertion.

For instance, Christians and Jews became “Dhimmis,” a second class group under Islam. Dhimmis were forced to wear distinctive clothing; it was Baghdad’s Caliph Al-Mutawakkil, in the ninth century, who designated a yellow badge for Jews under Islam, which Hitler copied and duplicated in Nazi Germany nearly a thousand years later.

I witnessed first-hand the “tolerance” of Islam when Islamists ravaged my country of birth, Lebanon, in the 1970’s, leaving widespread death and destruction in their wake. I saw how they re-paid the tolerance that Lebanese Christians extended toward them. My experience is not an isolated one. When you make an unfounded assertion about the “proud tradition” of tolerance in Islam, you do a great disservice to the hundreds of millions of non-Muslims who have been killed, maimed, enslaved, conquered, subjugated or displaced – in the cause of Islamic jihad.

Mr. President, those of us like me who are ringing the alarm in America about the threat of radical Islam would like nothing better than to peacefully co-exist with the Muslim world. Most Americans would like nothing better than to peacefully co-exist with the Muslim world. The obstacle to achieving this does not lie with us in America and the West. It lies with the hundreds of millions of Muslims worldwide, including many of their spiritual leaders, who take seriously the repeated calls to jihad in the Qur’an and the Hadith. Who regard “infidels” as inferior and worthy of conquering, subjugating and forcibly converting. Who support “cultural jihad” as a means to subvert non-Muslim societies from within. Who take seriously the admonitions throughout the Qur’an and the Hadith to convert the world to Islam – by force if necessary – and bring it under the rule of Allah.

Unless you are willing to courageously and honestly accept this, your aspirations for worldwide comity and peace in the Middle East are doomed to fail.

Sincerely,

Brigitte Gabriel

Cross-posted at SWAC Girl

D-Day sacrifice remembered ... June 6, 1944

~Remembering their valor, fidelity, and sacrifice~

Today is D-Day. How many will continue to remember this major milestone battle of World War II that played such a big part in the freedom we enjoy? How many will keep the observance alive even as the Greatest Generation dies off and the memories fade?

From the Washington Times:

It's "A Gathering of the Greatest Generation" - though this year only a small group of that era's aging heroes will commemorate the invasion of France at Normandy 65 years ago.

On Saturday afternoon, veterans will attend a National World War II Museum ceremony in New Orleans recognizing soldiers, sailors and airmen who made that invasion a turning point for Allied forces. However, organizers acknowledge few members of an already dwindling population are hardy enough to make the trip.

"We won't have a veteran from each state, unfortunately," said William Detweiler, who is in charge of the event. "They're all in their 80s and 90s now, and getting around is just too hard for many of them."

Nowhere did that touch home more than in Bedford, Virginia, where the National D-Day Memorial is located as a reminder of a small town that sacrificed so much for America:

Like eleven other Virginia communities, Bedford provided a company of soldiers (Company A) to the 29th Infantry Division when the National Guard's 116th Infantry Regiment was activated on 3 February 1941.

Some thirty Bedford soldiers were still in that company on D-Day; several more from Bedford were in other D-Day companies, including one who, two years earlier, had been reassigned from the 116th Infantry to the First Infantry Division. Thus he had already landed in both Northern Africa and Sicily before coming ashore on D-Day at Omaha Beach with the Big Red One.

Company A of the 116th Infantry assaulted Omaha Beach as part of the First Division's Task Force O. By day's end, nineteen of the company's Bedford soldiers were dead. Two more Bedford soldiers died later in the Normandy campaign, as did yet another two assigned to other 116th Infantry companies. Bedford's population in 1944 was about 3,200.

Proportionally this community suffered the nation's severest D-Day losses. Recognizing Bedford as emblematic of all communities, large and small, whose citizen-soldiers served on D-Day, Congress warranted the establishment of the National D-Day Memorial here.

Sadly, the last of the surviving "Bedford Boys" passed away April 19, 2009, at the age of 94. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported:

The storied journey of the “Bedford Boys” came to an end Sunday with the death of the group’s last surviving member, Ray Nance.

Nance, 94, was among the 35 young men from Bedford who stormed Normandy’s Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944.

In a 2007 interview, Nance recalled the day 65 years ago when he was wounded by shrapnel in his hand and foot. He took cover from machine gun fire in a pool of floating bodies. He watched friends die, he lay on the beach for hours and was ultimately rescued by a sergeant from Roanoke.

Of those 35 Bedford Boys to land on the Nazi-held beaches at the start of the D-Day invasion, 19 died in the first wave and two shortly after. The loss of 21 soldiers in Bedford’s community of 3,200 gave Bedford the highest proportional losses for D-Day, and led to the drive to build the National D-Day Memorial there.
...
“Every time I heard him talk about D-Day, he often said he never understood why he left and all the other men died,” [Bedford resident Lucille] Boggess said. “I think he was always a leader. All the men looked up to him.”

It was said after D-Day that we would never forget. Will future generations remember that promise?

Cross-posted at StrictlyVA and SWAC Girl