Saturday, May 31, 2008
Editorial: Short takes
Quick views on some of the week's news.
From the RoundTable blog
Read the latest entries
A forgettable governor
Has it really been 6½ years? It seems like yesterday that Jim Gilmore ended his term as governor. Well, to us anyway. Most Virginians barely remember the guy.
A poll conducted by Virginia Commonwealth University found that only 41 percent of voters know enough about the former governor to have formed an opinion about him. That's a problem for the man likely to be named the GOP's Senate candidate this weekend. He would run against another former governor, Mark Warner.
Seventy-seven percent of voters remember Warner, and he is widely liked for having fixed a state budget catastrophe during his term. Gilmore will have to do some hard selling to catch up.
Then again, maybe Gilmore is better off if Virginians don't remember much about him. The highlights of his term were a car tax fiasco and creating the budget catastrophe Warner fixed.
"Jim who?" might be a great campaign slogan.
Quick! Hit the Wal-Mart!
Well, have you stocked up on your batteries, bungee cords, bottled water, cellphone chargers, self-powered radios and duct tape?
We haven't either.
Sunday is the official start of hurricane season. And this was the week our state lawmakers gave us to stock up, tax free, on hurricane emergency supplies.
It's their way of saying they want Virginians to be safe.
What foresight.
They can't figure out a way to ease traffic gridlock in Hampton Roads, giving those folks a fighting chance of evacuating if the big one bears down on Virginia's coast. So lawmakers offer a holiday on the state sales tax for select hurricane survival gear.
It's so much less painful, after all, to lift taxes than to impose them.
But people are gonna have to be prepared when it's every man for himself.
Not to worry. The tax holiday lasts through today.
Life's just beachy
With gasoline priced at $4 a gallon, the sand and surf at Virginia Beach or the Outer Banks seem farther away this summer. A lot of people's pocketbooks won't stretch the distance.
That has made the timing all the better for Franklin County's opening of its Smith Mountain Lake Community Park. It's only the second public beach at the lake. The other one, Smith Mountain Lake State Park, is across the lake in Bedford County.
Franklin County managed to get its new beachfront park open by Memorial Day weekend. And -- for this year, anyway -- people can use it for free. Though it doesn't offer much in the way of surf, it has loads of sand -- more than 750 truck loads of white sand, they say.
If you can't take the family to the beach, the county has brought the beach to your family. Enjoy.
Getting 'em down on the farm
Virginia is running an online matchmaker service, but it's all about livestock and plows rather than hearts and flowers.
Over the next 15 years, Virginia Tech estimates, 70 percent of existing farms will change hands. Developers will be eyeing a lot of them. Many farmers nearing retirement would like to keep their land in production, though.
And there's a new generation of people out there who think they'd like to operate a farm but need help to acquire one -- and more help, in some cases, to operate one.
So the state has set up an online, searchable database of farm owners and prospective buyers. Farmers interested in selling or leasing their land, and maybe mentoring those in need of advice, can connect with prospects through Farm Link (vdacs.virginia.gov/preservation/farmlink.shtml).
People used to have to "marry or inherit" to acquire a family farm, but no more. Farmers have to keep up with technology to survive. So, too, their farmland.
