Ah, I’m having a time concentrating today. Perhaps its my exhaustion or maybe its the fact that looking at budget numbers can be quite mind numbing. Perhaps if I clear my mind, I’ll be able to return to looking at the differences between continuation appropriation and expansion items, which I need to finish by tomorrow morning.
Next week, I’ll add another candle on the cake, but I’m not sure about what to do? I thought about having some people over for the conference tournaments, or even going to a concert. Though the one concert that I would be interested in hasn’t even posted ticket information. But it’s not even around the birthday; it’s a week later.
Probably the best birthday that I’ve had in recent memory was two years ago. I was finishing up my divorce and the WWE was in town for the Monday night program. Two of their performers were going to be at a car dealership to sign autographs. Me and my now roommate then intern headed out to the dealership to meet Stacey Keibler and Chris Benoit. We could have cared less about Benoit, we were only interested in meeting Keibler. We didn’t go away empty handed. We got an autograph and a smile.
I could probably do better for a birthday celebration, but anytime you can celebrate your birthday and Stacey Keibler is involved (even if only through meeting at an autograph signing), it’s a good day.
I went home this weekend to the great state of West Virginia. As much as I love going home and being in the mountains of West Virginia, it always amazes me how much I enjoy leaving after a few days and returning to North Carolina. Both places mean a lot to me, each for their own reasons. Yet, sometimes I feel more at home in North Carolina than I do in West Virginia. Maybe it’s because I’ve been here for some time now, almost four years. Maybe it’s because I have a good group of friends. Or maybe it’s because of the barbecue, ok maybe not the barbecue.
I don’t tell a lot of people this, but as a young kid growing up in West Virginia I knew West Virginia wasn’t the end destination for me. The jobs just weren’t there and continue to not be there to this day. I always looked at North Carolina as the destination, especially Charlotte because of the “job market.” I’m not alone in that. Many people who grew up near where I did in southern West Virginia look at the Charlotte market as a place to move to to find a better job than working in the mines or at Wal-Mart. It’s the same for the people in the north, but they look more towards Pittsburgh.
That doesn’t alter my affection for West Virginia. It makes me appreciate more the struggles that hold the state back, from its antiquated tax structure, to its dependency on the federal government for money and jobs, and a business climate that is adverse to new businesses locating into the Mountain State.
For instance, West Virginia has a regressive tax on the sale soda products, especially on the items needed to produce soda, that has kept bottlers and soda companies from opening locations in the state. The tax has been used to build the West Virginia University School of Medicine, but the 50-year-old tax needs to go because it is keeping jobs out of the state. Pepsi recently opened a plant 60 miles from the border and company officials said they would not consider West Virginia because of the tax. Gov. Joe Manchin sought the tax’s elimination, however legislators changed his bill and made it a “study bill.” In legislative terms, the bill is dead, because in the line of government appropriations a lobbying effort from WVU or the government trumps the concerns of businesses that may or may not want to open locations (and thus create new jobs) in the state.
This is just one example. There are many more. My hope is that one day West Virginians see what is going on in the state. But whenever someone has tried they are accused of
being too political, dirty, and going up against the union.
