While I’m on the subject of government debt: Caroline County on its way to being $108,621,556 in debt.

That’s $4,090.13 of debt per citizen.

On June 30, 2008, the county was $92,630,740 in debt with $58,366,658 of that debt being principal and $34,264,082 being the interest.

50.579% ($46,851,746) of the debt was general government related while 49.420% ($45,778,993) was school related.

The county is in the process of refinancing some school related debt via the Virginia Public School Authority (VPSA) as well as borrowing more money for capital improvement projects (more on those projects below). With the new and restructured debt, the county would then be $108,621,556 in debt and the county wouldn’t finish paying off that debt until 2034.

All this debt would push the county to their established maximum debt policy ceiling (which is 12% of total general fund expenditures and school expenditures) for the 2010 and 2011 fiscal years. They would be close to the maximum debt policy ceiling for the 2012 fiscal year as well.

And remember the county is (supposedly) seriously considering borrowing another $4,500,000 next year to expand the County Park at Milford. The county still lacks a public safety building, a new school for the Bowling Green area, as well as a public works workshop. That’s what we call “priorities” folks.

Here are the projects that are being borrowed for this fiscal year, along with some editorial comments:

  • North Anna Boat Access — $50,000 — Wasn’t the State Fair of Virginia supposed to be paying for this as part of their proffer agreement?
  • Dawn Library — $765,000 — The Dawn Library has been in the works for a couple years but it could have probably have waited. Some of the costs for the library were reduced due to the fact that Maxie Rozell donated land for construction.
  • Welcome Signs — $40,000 — We have a massive budget deficit and they want to borrow money for welcome signs? What the heck…
  • County Park — $70,000 — We all know how Percy Ashcraft is obsessed with parks…
  • Farmer Mini Park – B.G. — $75,000 — Again…
  • Dawn Mini Park — $25,000 — And again…
  • Ladysmith Convenience Site Expansion — $100,000 — Needed from what I understand.
  • Radio System — $60,000 — Needed.
  • EMS Equip CC Ambulance #1 — $54,000 — Not needed. This item is supposed to be equipment for an ambulance running out of the proposed Carmel Church Fire Station. All the other equipment — including the station itself — were removed from the budget except for this item. I even e-mail Percy Ashcraft telling him this item shouldn’t be in the budget several months ago; good to see he’s paying attention.
  • Replacement Defibrillators — $31,164 — Needed, presumably.
  • Ladysmith VRS – Replace Unit #229 — $120,000 — Needed, presumably.
  • Frog Level VRS Generator — $42,500 — The rescue chief wanted his leaking roof fixed but instead he’s getting a generator!
  • BG VFD Replacement Air Compressor – Squad 1 — $17,000 — Needed, presumably.
  • Ladysmith Fire Truck — $39,678 — That amount is only to finish paying for the truck. The rest was paid for in the previous fiscal year. I bet the fine folks in Port Royal wish they would get a new truck since theirs was supposed to be replace 10 years ago.
  • Police Vehicle/Equipment — $464,100 — Needed, presumably.
  • Upgrade Sound System CCCSC — $95,000 — Needed, but that’s a lot of money.
  • Roll-Off Truck Replacement #2 — $140,000 — Not a 100% sure what this is. :)
  • Replace Compactor/Dawn — $24,000.
  • Replace Compactor Caroline High School — $20,000.
  • Clerk Computer System — $47,000 — A grant from the Virginia government was originally supposed to pay for this but I doubt that’s going to happen now with all the state budget cuts.
  • Circuit Court Security Area Modifications — $61,593 — Needed badly to improve security in the holding cells. Remember the Circuit Court deals with felons, folks.
  • IT Budget — $140,000 — Maybe they will fix the county’s terrible e-mail server.
  • Roll off Truck — $135,000.
  • 116 units from Municipal Emergency Services — $535,106

Total: $3,151,141

Source: All these numbers are from the Caroline County, Virginia Capital Fund Analysis dated September 23, 2008, prepared by Davenport & Company LLC.

And I officially declare Obama will be the winner of this election.

From Times Online out of the United Kingdom:

With his electoral prospects fading by the day, Senator John McCain has fallen out with his vice-presidential running mate about the direction of his White House campaign…

Mark Salter, McCain’s long-serving chief of staff, is understood to have told campaign insiders that he would prefer his boss, a former Vietnam prisoner of war, to suffer an “honourable defeat” rather than conduct a campaign that would be out of character – and likely to lose him the election.

Palin, 44, has led the character attacks on Obama in the belief that McCain may be throwing away the election and her chance of becoming vice-president. Her supporters think that if the Republican ticket loses on November 4, she should run for president in 2012…

A McCain official confirmed that there was dissension in the campaign. “There is always going to be a debate about the costs and benefits of any strategy,” he said.

H/t: Ace of Spades HQ, Hot Air

National Debt Clock runs out of digits.

$700,000,000,000 here, $300,000,000,000 there, soon we’re talking about real money.

AP via Yahoo! News:

The National Debt Clock is shown near Times Square in New York, Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2008. The clock has run out of digits to record the growing figure. As a temporary fix, the dollar sign has been switched to a figure–the “1” in $10 trillion. The clock is marking the current national debt at about $10.2 trillion. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

“We’re Screwed ’08” and why I am seriously considering not voting for McCain (or anyone).

The “We’re Screwed ’08” is Michelle Malkin’s view on this election.

I kinda like the tagline from the first Alien vs. Predator film: “Whoever wins… We lose.”

A commenter on The right-wing liberal posted the following on an optimistically written post about Tuesday’s debate:

Thank God you have a somewhat calm and collected take on this. If I read many more “we’re doomed, doomed I say!!” blog posts by conservatives I’m going to start slapping people (with a baseball bat).

Well, threat of a baseball bat or not, we are doomed.

We have both Presidential candidates supporting a $700,000,000,000 bailout of banks that were ineptly ran. Those banks chose to give loans to people that had no ability to repay them. That $700,000,000,000 adds an additional $2,292.31 of debt to every American. Anyone have $2,292.31 that they are willing to pony up to give to banks that were ran by idiots (those idiots were making a mint too with their golden parachutes) and had bad business practices?

Now, we have the Republican candidate stating he’s going to spend $300,000,000,000 to bail people out of variable-rate mortgages that those people chose to agree to. McCain’s plan would give the Treasury Department the power to lower the principal and fix the interest rate on people’s mortgages. These people agreed to variable-rate mortgages when you have some of the lowest fixed interest rates over the last couple years since 1972. That $300,000,000,000 would add another $982.42 to every American’s debt. Pay through the nose please.

Hell, he essentially stole the idea from Biden who mentioned it during the Veep debate. Obama/Biden want to give United States Bankruptcy Courts the power to lower the principal and interest rates on mortgages.

And McCain had the gall to state he was considering appointing a campaign advisor and buddy (Meg Whitman) as Secretary of Treasury. That worked real well for Bush and Michael Brown over at FEMA.

Ham Sandwich is looking more and more promising as a candidate as this goes along.

I have a feeling that it’s only going to get worse from here on out.

Besides the whole bailout thing, we have the genius Mav[erick] stating that after the Russians pulled out of Afghanistan the Taliban came back in.

Uh, the Russians pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989.

The Taliban didn’t exist until September 1994 and didn’t take control of the country until 1996.

Isn’t McCain supposed to be an expert on foreign policy?

You had Obama stating the following on foreign policy: invade Pakistan, embargo Iran, pullout out of Iraq, and occupy Darfur.

Did McCain press Obama on any of that? No, of course not. In fact, you had McCain stating intervention in Lebanon was a bad thing while bombing, invading, and occupying Yugoslavia (especially Serbia) needed to be done.

Let me get this straight: Muslim terrorists in Lebanon holding CIA officers hostage = not a threat. Dictator in Yugoslavia (Serbia) with no means to effect the United States = threat.

I would just like to thank all the geniuses that voted for McCain over Fred Thompson or Mitt Romney in the early primaries.

You guys got us in this mess and frankly, you can get us out because I’m finished with it.

Correction/Clarification: Kathy Beard misquoted by The Caroline [Lack of] Progress.

Kathy Beard, the Director of Tourism, was [mis]quoted as stating that the county received $1,600,000 in taxes from the transient occupancy tax (TOT) in 2007 by The Caroline Progress.

Gary Wilson’s response to an e-mail seeking a comment about that claim:

Mr. Watson,

Thanks for your questions regarding the impact of the tourism industry in Caroline County.

The report discussed during the meeting reflected the tourism revenue impact dollars in Caroline for 2007. These numbers are supplied by the Virginia Tourism Corporation and have been tracked throughout Virginia for years. These numbers were not presented as any type of county budget indicator, as they only monitor the income produced by the industry within the jurisdiction.

This table reflects the Caroline County section of the report:

County ($ Millions) ($ Millions) (Thousands) ($ Millions) ($ Millions)
2007 (preliminary) State Tax Local Tax
Expenditures Payroll Employment Receipts Receipts
CAROLINE 70.21 9.78 0.56 3.44 1.61

Caroline County collects transient occupancy taxes at a rate of 5% per each lodging occurrence. These are the only funds that support the Tourism program for the county. The local tax receipt figure reported above by the state for 2007 are a combination of lodging, meals, sales, fuel, and several other types of taxes, generated by that activity, not the amount of funds dedicated to the tourism budget in Caroline County.

Again, thank you for your inquiry regarding the tourism impact in Caroline. Although we will certainly see a decline in these revenue numbers due to the slowing economy, we hope tourism in Caroline County will continue to play an important role in new revenue spreading throughout the county.

Source: http://www.vatc.org/research/2007VACountyEstimates.xls

In English, Director Wilson is stating the Ms. Beard referenced the fact that the Virginia Tourism Corporation estimates the county received $1,6100,000 in taxes from tourism related industries. That would be seen in sales tax, gasoline taxes, and other taxes including TOT.

My follow-up:

Are you stating that Ms. Beard was misquoted by The Caroline Progress?

His response:

Ms. Beard was indeed misquoted.

A snoozefest, definitely.

I asked the following question about the debate in the title of my live blog post: A debate for the ages or a snoozefest?

Well, we got our answer.

As Matt “threat to democracy” Drudge notes: “B O R I N G”

Michelle Malkin: “Zzzzzzzz”

I think I will just copy and paste the stuff from this live blog for the next live blog. No one will notice the difference probably.

A debate for the ages or a snoozefest?: The second Presidential debate; live hate-blogging starting at 8:45 p.m.

This is the top post until after the debate. Scroll down for the newer stuff.

The cool thing about this software is that you, my precious readers (all three of you), don’t have to bother refreshing the page every minute just to read my inane ramblings.

Other live blogs:

RWL: “Warner’s explanation: Who are you going to believe? Me? Or your lying ears?”

Check out it out. A sample:

This will cause some fun in the blogosphere and at the very least a major hiccup for Warner, but it’s emblematic of a larger issue with Marky Mark. The Dem nominee is the poster-boy for the “limousine liberal” (as Bob Novak calls them), wealthy politicos who vote for the Democrats on social or foreign policy issues, but mainly driven by an elitist snobbery that has no use for ordinary Virginians or what they think.

Read the whole thing as they say.