{"id":1015,"date":"2010-07-10T16:07:27","date_gmt":"2010-07-10T20:07:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jakestapleton.com\/opinion\/2010\/07\/senator-byrd-federal-money-cant-and-didnt-solve-everything\/"},"modified":"2012-12-16T16:52:30","modified_gmt":"2012-12-16T21:52:30","slug":"senator-byrd-federal-money-cant-and-didnt-solve-everything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jakestapleton.com\/wordpress\/archives\/1015","title":{"rendered":"Senator Byrd Federal Money can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t and didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t solve everything"},"content":{"rendered":"

The quotations below are from the WSJ Opinion Piece by Brian Bolduc.<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Senator Byrd thank you for your service to this state.\u00c2\u00a0 Even though I disagreed with almost everyone of your political stances I have to believe that your heart was in the right place when it came to WV.\u00c2\u00a0 However the billions of dollars in Federal Money that you sent to this state only allowed it to sink deeper into poverty while allowing some mistakenly to believe that progress was being made.<\/p>\n

The state now has to maintain a sea of asphalt and concrete that our tax base will never in the near future be able to support.\u00c2\u00a0 We now have to maintain large buildings and facilities that we never should have been able to build.\u00c2\u00a0 WV has been the beneficiary or victim depending upon your view of wealth redistribution.\u00c2\u00a0 You funneled money from other states to your own and allowed every single item to bear your name.\u00c2\u00a0 Yet all this money did nothing.<\/p>\n

When Byrd became senator in 1959, West Virginia ranked No. 39 in median family income, and No. 42 in per capita income. Today, it’s No. 48 in both categories.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Your continuous flow of money allowed WV the luxury of not having to make the hard choices that needed to be made.\u00c2\u00a0 It allowed the budget to be balanced every year and hard choices to be continually put off.\u00c2\u00a0 Almost every single bit of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153advancement\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that came as a result of your work was just more federal money being brought into the state.\u00c2\u00a0 We have jails, the FBI center, large hospitals, but very little of the enormous amount of money that you robbed from other states created private investment.\u00c2\u00a0 For decades WV has needed to make changes to its tax structure and business climate that would spur private sector growth.\u00c2\u00a0 But we never did; the state just allowed Big Daddy to continue to write checks for money that was not his.<\/p>\n

51.3% of the state’s economy relies on spending by the local, state and federal government\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthe highest level of any state. “We’ve created this culture of dependency,” warns Mr. Sobel, “Our human capital is not good at competing in the marketplace; it’s good at securing federal grants.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I am both happy and sad at the days that are to come for my beloved state of WV.\u00c2\u00a0 I am happy that maybe finally the elected officials will be made to force changes that will hopefully allow the state to grow.\u00c2\u00a0 I am sad that it has to be done in such a compressed time frame.\u00c2\u00a0 With only about 20 to 30 years of coal excise taxes left we have less than a generation to make changes that could have started in the 60\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s and 70\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s.\u00c2\u00a0 WV\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s workforce is strong and dedicated but they lack the opportunity to work and fulfill their potential. Until the business climate in WV is improved its economic status will continue to deteriorate.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

An economy that grows because of government spending and not private sector investment is nothing more than redistribution of wealth.\u00c2\u00a0 The faucet has now been turned off its time for WV to make the hard choices.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Jake Stapleton 07-10-10<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The quotations below are from the WSJ Opinion Piece by Brian Bolduc. Senator Byrd thank you for your service to this state.\u00c2\u00a0 Even though I disagreed with almost everyone of your political stances I have to believe that your heart was in the right place when it came to WV.\u00c2\u00a0 However the billions of dollars […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion-thought"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2tyCm-gn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jakestapleton.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jakestapleton.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jakestapleton.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jakestapleton.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jakestapleton.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1015"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jakestapleton.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3360,"href":"https:\/\/jakestapleton.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015\/revisions\/3360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jakestapleton.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jakestapleton.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jakestapleton.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}