Talk:Jim Gilmore

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This article seems a bit biased to me. There is no criticism stated of Gimore, especially in regards to his reduction of the car tax, despite the fact that he was critized for the deficit and tax burden problems brought on by that move [1][2]. Could someone look into this?

--A bit!?!?? This article could have been lifted straight from the Republican Party's website, and I would not be surprised.

I removed the most flagrant Republican bias and replaced it with a NPOV. As a VA college student, I can tell you that there is NO WAY tuition went down by 20%, so I removed that bit. Otherwise, everything else is basically preserved but with a NPOV.

What does everyone think?

This article seems quite biased to me too.

This is beyond biased. Gilmore's tax cuts did serious, serious damage to VA's economy and infrastructure. Rewrite!

Gilmore cut tuitions by 20% in 1999 and then froze tuition for the remainder of his term. It was a widely documented public policy approved by the Virginia General Assembly over the muted college presidents. Gov. Warner and Gov. Kaine lifted the tuition freeze and tuition has virtually doubled since 2002. Gov. Kaine signed legislation in 2006 that calls for up to 9-10% tuition increases in future years. The current Va. college student disputes that Gilmore cut tuition by 20% in 1999? S/he was probably in junior high school when it occurred and should become more knowledgable before editing history s/he has no knowledge of.

To whom it may concern: Whatever you have been told about these tax cuts causing serious damage to VA's economy is completely false. In fact, it has been recently uncovered that there was no budget deficit in Virginia. At no time did Virginia have a budget deficit from Gilmore's tax cuts. In fact, before Mark Warner ever raised taxes, there was a $600 million surplus in the budget of Virginia. Also, if there was such a budget crisis, how did the budget of Virginia increase from $40 billion to ~$67 billion during the so called "crisis". Just so you do not believe that I'm entirely biased: Mark Warner's administration recently released information that his last budget was off by about $145 million, making his administration seem better than it really was. So the question to ask should be: Was Mark Warner ever telling us the truth, or is he just inept fiscally? Which do you think he would prefer? Maybe his recent pullout of the 2008 contest has something to do with him lying to Virginian's for 4 years? Jim Gilmore has never lied about anything during his administration; he was always honest and forthright. He was successful, popular and the epitome of what conservatism should be. These facts alone could explain why democrats hate him so much and why Republicans praise him.

--Care to add 'He never lied in his life' (which now reads above "...has never lied about anything during his administration")to the article, perhaps with some sources? And last I checked, he wasn't popular enough to bring Mark Earley in on his coattails.

-You obviously do not know very much about the campaign of Mark Earley. Mark Earley never asked for any campaign support from Jim Gilmore. Had Earley asked Gilmore, Gilmore would have definitely helped him in his campaign. Also, you're cute little jab about "he never lied in his life", it's funny. What we all have been referring to is that it was not Gilmore who did anything poor or wreckless with the state budget (as sited below). So while you think we're attempting to portray Governor Gilmore as something he is not, it is actually you who is unwilling to accept the fact that you were lied to by Mark Warner.

--Is that you, Jim?

[edit] Tuition Increase and Budgets

As another VA college student (and VMI alum), from 1999-2006, I can with authority say that Gilmore's tuition freeze was in effect for a few years, and actually rolled back prices 20%; this was in effect for all public universities in Virginia. I'll even source it, so no one needs to argue about it anymore: ( http://www.epi.elps.vt.edu/BRC/brc299.html ). You can look up the freeze at UVA's legal library via the web as well, if you care to have a primary source. As for deficits, as someone else already noted, there never was one: ( http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=15458 and http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/21/AR2005072102289.html ). As for supposed damage to infrastructure, please source; Virginia has a very large transportation budget when compared to other states on a per capita basis, and attracts a disproportionately large amount of federal dollars on highway projects, such as the Wilson Bridge, the HRBT, new paving on 81, 64, and 77, etc.

If there ever was anything that violated both the letter and spirit of NPOV, it was wiki users who have a political agenda and see "bias" where no exists.

--Then I suppose those who think this conforms to NPOV wouldn't mind elaborating on why college presidents opposed the tuition freeze?

-Isn't that obvious? If you cut tuitions for students to attend Colleges and Universities, the college presidents get less money to spend per year. You don't think colleges and universities up their tuitions by $1,000's per year to counter inflation, do you? (edit was do to not checking what I had written in the first place. I apologize for the mistake. By the way, get sources yourself. But also remember that you're reading a liberal medium that caters to people like Mark Warner)

--Right, I forgot that college presidents' pay is tied directly with tuition. It couldn't possibly be that College and Universities are competing for students with infrastructure improvements and funding research. I was willing to buy that this article was relatively unbiased until this Horowitzian statement. You didn't help yourself by replacing "for themselves" with "per year," either. The Washington Post archives host of a plethora of articles about Virginia's budget woes after Gilmore's tax cuts. Unfortunately they are all behind an archive subscription wall, but the titles and abstracts are there for all to see. Please find some sources, this is childish.

--Let's get this straight.. you admit you can't source your information, but challenge others to find sources about the so-called budget crisis precipitated by the Gilmore tax cuts? Nearly every news source reported a budget shortfall during the post-Gilmore years that did not exist. The link I listed above is from the Washington Post itself, which is an article about how the biennial projection was wrong, and that Virginia actually ran a surplus of nearly $1 billion dollars before the tax increases enacted by the General Assembly. Yet you allude to articles that aren't publicly available, and are older than the story contained in the link I posted.

--That is correct, I haven't done the homework to find reliable sources, which is why I have not edited the article. You got me. Your WaPo article does mention that those budget projections did not take into account liabilities like Medicaid and Education payments, so there is at the very least a possibility of creative accounting in that $1 billion figure. I notice the snarky comment about college professors has been removed.