A crop to replace tobacco
While researching on the Internet last night, I ran across this article by Kurt Rheinheimer. The author’s name was very familiar to me as he is the editor of Blue Ridge Country, a magazine I have enjoyed reading for many years.
This comment in the 1988 Roanoker article about Virginia’s Explore Park struck me as very ironic:
“Tell me how to save coal and I’ll do it,” says Vinton Delegate and Explore’s legislative champion Richard Cranwell. “Tell me how to create a crop that will replace tobacco and I’ll work on it….”
posted by Lisa @ 6:36 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
A new crop that can pay big dividends not only for the farmers that grow it, but also the area itself. Finally, someone comes out with new solutions--not just the same old rhetoric.
A politically-savvy friend keeps telling me that we need to bring new blood and new ideas into the Democratic Party to energize our base. According to him, we have to start putting forth the ideas that we as Democrats really support and stop giving voters the same old boring platform to consider (what we think they want to hear about: jobs, taxes, and abortion). While the need for the platform hasn’t changed, he says it takes new solutions to address them in the face of attempted removals of our rights as citizens. Although we have never really faced problems like this before, he feels we are not going to solve the problems unless we have new ideas and solutions to talk about and new leaders to follow. I think he's right.
[He also keeps telling me that Ewert and Cranwell are “Old Guard” and "Blue Dog" Democrats--and are about 15 years out of the mainstream of thought on issues. Not that all Blue Dog Democrats are behind the times, but people who ARE behind the times turn out to be Blue Dogs. Don't get me wrong, so-called Blue Dogs are usually thought of as being the right candidates for Virginia--but times are changing and we must change with them or be left at the ballot box. I don't feel we can afford to be left behind much longer. “Old Guard”—is that a synonym for hanging on a little longer before being put out to pasture?]
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