THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 14, 1996 TAG: 9601120166
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: On the Street
SOURCE: Bill Reed
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
Things we'd like to see in 1996, but probably won't:
Congress and the White House getting their acts together and passing a balanced budget without further bickering and political bilge pumping.
Ditto for the Virginia legislative and executive branches.
U.S. voters coming to their senses and kicking out - en mass - both legislative and executive branches of the government in November in exchange for a new bunch that will be more sensitive their interests.
Members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives taking a voluntary pay cut, giving up their gold-plated retirement plans and opting to pay for their own health care and insurance plans like the average American taxpayer is obliged to do.
While we're on the subject, having our Washington representatives give up their private gym, post office, barbershop, cafeteria and subway and opening them to low-income and down-and-out residents of the capital city - or even to visitors from Duluth or Hackensack.
O.J. Simpson entering a Franciscan monastery and disappearing forever from TV screens and newspaper pages, along with his new mail-order videotape and his million dollar lawyers.
Ditto for his former prosecutors and other hangers-on who seek to exploit their one-time connections with the Juice - legal and otherwise.
U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., holding a news conference wherein he enthusiastically supports the Lake Gaston project that is designed to supply Virginia Beach with water into the next century and beyond and says there is really enough water to go around. So drink up and be merry, everybody.
In the same news conference, Helms backs off his stand against gays in the military and concedes that we're all God's children - good and bad.
Just after Helms holds his news conference, AT&T officials hold one of their own, announcing that company bigwigs have decided not to lay off 40,000 workers after all, and that corporate greed does not override the needs and concerns of the little guys on the payroll. This has a chilling effect on every fast-food chain in the country, because they were hungrily eyeing those jobless AT&T stiffs as a potential pool of burger flippers.
Norfolk political leaders being up front about the financial risks involved in Nauticus, the MacArthur Mall development project and the relocation of the Pirates of the Canadian Football League from Shreveport to Norfolk. But hey, what's another $400,000 from Norfolk taxpayers to renovate Foreman Field for a financially troubled team that'll probably skeedaddle out of town at the first sign of money problems?
Virginia Beach political leaders sticking to their guns and refusing to contribute even a nickel to the Foreman Field renovation fund. After all, what do we owe a bunch of Norfolk pols who helped torpedo a Lake Gaston water project agreement last year? Besides, we have all the financial problems we can handle right here in Virginia Beach, what with a $12.1 million public school deficit still confronting us and no resolution in sight. MEMO: If readers have in mind things they'd like to see in 1996, but probably
won't, please forward your contributions to The Beacon's On The Street
column by fax _ 490-7235 or by mail to 4565 Virginia Beach Blvd.,
Virginia Beach, Va., 23462. These contributions could find their way
into future ``On The Street'' columns in coming Sundays.
by CNB