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Lead-in signs help make sale

An important part to selling a home is the ability to have lead-in signs to direct potential buyers to the property that is for sale. It becomes very difficult when someone continues to take these signs down.

While a person may not want to a home in their neighborhood to sell, they have no right to hamper the selling process by continuously taking down these lead-in signs.

In some remote neighborhoods this is the only mechanism to bring in potential buyers.

I am writing this because my husband and I have enjoyed living in Cold Harbor Farms for 27 years. Because we are in our late stage of life we have found it necessary to downsize and buy a home that we can manage that is smaller.

Our realtor has exhausted all possible avenues to advertise our property and the most effective way is her lead-in signs, which someone continues to remove on a daily basis.

We have even spoken with our Cold Harbor supervisor, Elton Wade, to make sure that these signs are being placed in accordance with county code. He assured me that we are doing it properly and that when these signs are removed from a state easement that it actually is a misdemeanor
. We write this editorial as an appeal to ask whoever is taking down our signs to please stop doing this and help us get our home sold.

Thank you.

Janice and John Nunnally
Mechanicsville

Assertions are not facts

Too often in political discourse assertions are allowed to pass as facts.

The T.E.A. Party has been attacked once again and it is now time to correct the record.

Doug Smith certainly has a right to his opinion but it’s factual distortions must not go unchallenged. 

First. he accuses us of “littering up the neighborhood,” a charge that seems to be an excuse to attack a group and a message he just does not like.

Since my phone number was listed in the material, anyone who considered it to be litter could have easily picked up the phone and called.

Among the many calls I received in response to the materials there was not a single complaint. 

His “well heeled” comment appears to be an attempt to paint us as a group of rich and selfish people who don’t care for others.

Our members come from all walks of life and living within our means is a basic tenet of the TEA Party message, both as individual citizens as well as a state or nation.

In 2009 my AGI was $47,000 less than in 2008. I have never bought a new car, and live in a house I paid $125,000 for in 1998. I pay for my own health insurance even though it costs more than usual because I’m self-employed.

Progressives seem to ignore history. Forty-five years of Great Society programs should be sufficient time to reach certain conclusions regarding their effectiveness. How then would Smith explain the economic and social basket case that is Detroit and so many other cities in America that have long been under control of liberal/progressive Democrats? 

Compassion should not excuse bad policy as it has with many of these programs. Many citizens who would have been helped by being taught self-reliance and personal responsibility have been condemned to what is too often permanent status as wards of a paternalistic state.

The very policies that Smith seems to advocate have produced 40 million on food stamps and the number grows daily. Is this his idea of progress?

He says we want to “strangle government” — what nonsense!  “Strangling the truth “ would be a better description of Smith’s assertions.

Virginia’s budget is a textbook example of excessive spending. It took the state’s entire history — some 230 years — to reach a point where Virginia was spending $34 billion a year. It took only 10 more years to double that amount while the population grew by less than five percent.

The same can be said of the federal government’s expenditures vs. the growth of our population — legal and illegal. 

Our opponents always argue for more spending, if only they had more money. Each new army of Progressives believe they are smarter than the last group and they will do it better.

History says different. The only winners have been the rapidly growing, bloated-budget civil service agencies.

Smith’s call for paying a “fair share” is another example of ignoring the facts. When 47 percent of Americans pay no federal income tax, where does he think the money comes from?

When you have a system so out of balance (oddly titled “Progressive”) there is an ingrained tendency for government to grow out of control.

Too many of our nation’s citizens have no “skin in the game.” This 47 percent couldn’t care less about spending and many of them get SSI, Medicaid and other welfare programs that continue to be expanded in terms of dollars and numbers of recipients. And their Democrat/liberal/progressive enablers are demanding more and more money from productive members of society.

And, by the way, Mr. Smith, your “fair share” of the Obama administration’s $13 trillion national debt will soon hit $119,000.

Smith’s assertion that I, or the TEA Party, favored Wall Street bailouts is simply ridiculous and perhaps a sign of bias.

It is crystal clear that TARP and other obscene bailouts initiated by unprincipled Republicans and Democrats alike are major factors in giving birth to the TEA Party movement.

We invite attention to the government-subsidized, horribly mismanaged Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage bureaucracies, which have already cost taxpayers $170 billion and are estimated to need another $500 billion. Their fraud, waste and abuse are always glossed over by those who favor government remedies for every problem, real and imagined.

Clearly, because of the exposure that hearings would provide if Fannie and Freddie were held up to the same scrutiny as private sector entities, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and other Democrats who facilitated this are stonewalling.

Mr. Smith, Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines took $50 million in compensation over five years while running it billions of dollars into the red.

Why the outcry against “excessive” compensation for executives in free-market companies but hardly a peep about Raines and his greedy cronies?

With Democrats holding power, I think most people understand why.

Last but certainly not least is Smith’s charge that we are somehow lacking in Christian values. He must have missed the TEA Party’s high-profile effort last fall that collected 288 frozen turkeys for Richmond area food banks. Since this was announced in The Mechanicsville Local and other news outlets and we had a collection site in the area, Smith could have set a personal example of Christian charity by making a turkey donation. 

In closing, we extend a sincere invitation to Mr. Smith and all other concerned citizens to attend a TEA Party meeting, particularly our “Debunking Global Warming “ presentation he alluded to that is coming up July 8.

We can focus on more than one issue at a time, no confusion here. To suggest to the contrary simply illustrates the anger that was so apparent in his letter.

Too many misinformed and misguided people simply do not like it that millions of Americans are rising up, unwilling to allow America to become an economic disaster like Greece.

Virginia’s Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli said it best last week in a speech to a major TEA Party gathering in Manassas, “You are not obliged to win the fight, you are obliged however to fight the fight.” And that we shall.

Bob Shannon
Mechanicsville TEA Party
King William