$2 Million Later, Historical Highway Marker approved for June Carter Cash
The wealthy AP Carter family of Scott County Virginia will receive another in a long line of tributes. After getting as much as $2 million tax dollars to fix up the family barn under the guise of tourism/economic development, the late June Carter Cash will now get a highway marker. Quoting WHSV.com January 7, 2009:A sign slated for placement in Scott County will commemorate the life of June Carter Cash, born in Maces Springs to the "First Family of Country Music:" the Carter Family. June Carter, in the words of the marker, "played the guitar and sang with the second generation Carter Family, Mother Maybelle, and the Carter Sisters." In the early 1960s, Carter toured with Johnny Cash, whom she married in 1968. The pair later won Grammy awards for their duets.Situated near Hiltons Virginia, The Carter Family Fold project along AP Carter Highway (named after guess who) is part of a multi-million tourism investment scam operated by the State and local agencies to bring jobs and prosperity to ailing Scott County and surrounding area. This has left local residents asking why didn't the wealthy Carter Family and all the country music stars pay for fixing the family barn instead of using economic development funds from taxpayers. Good question.
Bristol in general has suckered the taxpayers out of millions of development dollars for all sorts of silly country music nonsense. This includes a failed country music museum that will relocate from the Bristol Mall moving into an abandoned garage downtown. The cost to taxpayers will at least $8 million. That will join the $6 million already spent on a similar project at the still empty Bristol Train Station.
The fact is the country music industry dumped Bristol decades ago and developed to what it is in Nashville, not Bristol. The few recordings made here decades ago are long forgotten except when taxpayers are paying big bucks to consultants and ad agencies to promote them. The real industry is not tourism as such, but the industry developing tourism at taxpayer expense. The general public gets nothing out of any of this.
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The High Cost of the Non-Profits Industry
The number of organizations that can offer their donors a tax break in the name of charity has grown more than 60 percent in the United States, to 1.1 million, in just a decade. The $300 billion donated to charities last year cost the federal government more than $50 billion in lost tax revenue. The I.R.S. approves 99 percent of the applications for public charity in 2008 according to a new study at Stanford University.Representative Xavier Becerra a California Democrat says, "It's not free and so we need to do something to make sure taxpayers are getting a big enough benefit in return." Most of the article goes into the shear number of charities and how easy the process is. According to NYT the tax code defines public charities as organizations that are "religious, educational, charitable, scientific, literary, testing for public safety, to foster national or international amateur sports competition or prevention of cruelty to animals."
That could mean almost anything and "less than 5 percent of the applications for public charity status were turned down" even if they bother to check them out" according to the NYT. Even the IRS sates, "most new charities are more akin to the soccer group than the hospital." What that means in the Bristol Virginia and Southwest Virginia community is a massive public, but shadowy industry that evades millions in property and other taxes and delivers nothing to the average citizen. Many operate as an often closed mini economy often economically and socially severed from the general community. Ref. New York Times December 6, 2009
- Tax-exempt status for churches an unfair subsidy, should end
- Nonprofits Reach for Profits on the Side
- Tax Churches
- Sample Church
- Should churches be taxed?
$4.9 million in state anti-terrorism funds to go for pork
Bristol Virginia has never been threatened by terrorism, but they are slated to get $335,000 of $4.9 million which will buy fancy equipment to fight some perceived future terrorism threat. The grants are based on need and Bristol has a lot of needs. Needs like police on the streets, not a SWAT van for the City bomb squad and special weapons teams. Of the 45 police departments across Virginia, Bristol got the biggest slice. To quote SynaVista News,The State Homeland Security Program provides funds to help build capabilities at the state and local levels through planning, training, exercise activities and purchase of needed equipment. Equipment scheduled for purchase with these grants includes incident response vehicles, personal protective equipment, automatic license plate readers and bomb squad gear. Potential recipients and equipment needs were identified through an analysis conducted annually by local law enforcement leaders, the Virginia Sheriffs' Association, and the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police.
Based on the needs analysis, project proposals were developed and submitted through the Governor’s Office to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for review and approval. Once DHS approved, the grants were issued by the Department of Criminal Justice Services, the administrative agency in Virginia for law enforcement grants under the SHSP program.
Bristol claims to have the only bomb squad this end of the state. There's never been anything of a terrorist nature in this region, but we will be ready according to smiling officials. Yet the state is broke and our new Governor is determined to slash social services and schools, but this kind of pork keeps coming.
What they need the money for is to reopen the auxiliary police station in the public housing projects. This was closed due to lack of funding and did a lot of good suppressing crime in the area. Instead these funds will end up as more corporate contracts. For info on these grants see http://www.dcjs.virginia.gov/grants/ Posted March 11, 2010
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