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Boston Globe
3 days ago
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Traitor or hero? Statue of George Washington stirs mixed reaction in London.
Why was a rebel commander and vanquisher of redcoats — the confounding father of a breakaway republic — ascending a pedestal in a plaza devoted to Britain's own heroes, including the eldest son of the king Washington routed in the Revolution? Related : Advertisement To most of those pausing to watch, there were no hard feelings about that 18th-century unpleasantness. But Washington's arrival was a bit of a head-scratcher to many, given the current transatlantic tumult and the state of the special relationship 46 presidents later. 'At least it's not Trump,' Townshend concluded with a shrug before going on her way. 'We're not completely happy with America right now,' said Judith Webster, visiting London from the city of Sheffield in the north of England. 'I'm not really sure I want him here.' Families walking to school passed the statue of Washington. Gabriella Demczuk In fact, the metal commander in chief was not a newcomer. The sculpture was sent in 1914 by the Commonwealth of Virginia, a gift from former colony to former colonizer to mark the 100-year anniversary of the Treaty of Ghent, which formally ended decades of war between the United States and the United Kingdom. It was a cast copy of a marble statue by French master Jean-Antoine Houdon, sculpted from a plaster mask of Washington's face. The original statue stands in the Virginia Capitol to this day. Advertisement Trafalgar Square, near the Charing Cross rail station in central London, is a bit more exposed to the elements. So after a century of the replica steeping in London pollution, a group of Virginians had it taken away in May for restoration and the construction of a new limestone plinth. It was rededicated Wednesday in a ceremony featuring Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, the American and British ambassadors, and former prime ministers Theresa May and David Cameron. But Washington's spot flanking the entrance of the National Gallery — Britain's National Gallery — has always been an oddity, showing up on lists of London's weird wonders and a fun fact for taxi drivers to share with American tourists. Tour guide legend holds that the statute was set on a patch of dirt transported from Virginia to honor Washington's reputed pledge to never again set foot on English soil. Locals, meanwhile, in online message boards and tour groups, periodically debate the propriety of honoring a British subject who went on to best the British army and slice off a valuable hunk of the empire. 'George Washington was indeed a traitor to the crown,' a poster said last year in a thread on the topic on Quora. But to most of the visitors and workers surging through Trafalgar every day, he is just one more garden-variety great man in the sculptural clutter of central London. Advertisement A crowd watched as conservators placed the Washington statue in front of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. Gabriella Demczuk 'Everyone walks past statues all the time without looking at them,' said Alexandra Jackson, a Blue Badge tourist guide. 'It was really more noticed when it disappeared. People were wondering if it was taken away because someone might throw something at it.' The rebooting of Trafalgar's Washington began when John Gerber, an architect and developer from McLean, did a double take when he passed the familiar figure during a visit last year. He was delighted to read the inscription that it was a gift of his home state but distressed to see how worn it was, particularly the pedestal. Gerber formed a fund-raising group, Friends of the Washington Statue, and pitched the idea of a rehab to Youngkin and British architect Norman Foster, who agreed to oversee the work. In May, workers wrangled the figure and the 1.3-ton pedestal to the studio of art conservator Rupert Harris. 'It's never touched the ground since it's been here,' Harris said in his east London workshop this month, with the Father of America standing serenely amid the dismembered heads and torsos. Related : For weeks, Washington stood elevated on a wooden pallet as he was stripped of grime, repaired, and buffed to high gloss with repeated coats of the black wax used on many London sculptures. That just was normal procedure, but Harris was also aware of the whole never-touch-English-soil thing. Which, as it turns out, is not true. Nothing the researchers could find suggests Washington ever said he was loath to set foot in England, nor that Virginia clay was brought for the statue to stand on. Advertisement 'It seems to be completely made up,' said Douglas Bradburn, president of Mount Vernon, Washington's Virginia home, now a museum and popular tourist stop. 'It goes completely against the character of George Washington, who made it clear he did not resent the people of England.' Washington never visited Britain (his only trip abroad was to Barbados), but he considered himself a proud English subject for the first part of his life, Bradburn said. He was popular in Britain even during the American Revolution, known to be magnanimous in victory and respectful to defeated officers. George III himself, upon hearing that the general who pried America from his royal grasp gave up his command and returned to farming, called Washington 'the greatest man of the age,' according to Troy Bickham, a Texas A&M University historian who has written about the post-Revolution relationship between the two countries. 'The English public were frustrated with their own generals, who weren't able to win,' Bickham said. 'And here was this American guy, a gentleman farmer. He wouldn't even take a salary.' This reputation made it an easy sell when, 131 years after the Revolutionary War, Virginia offered London a Washington of its own. The statue arrived in 1914, and King George V personally approved Trafalgar for its home. World War I intervened, and it wasn't until 1921 that the statue was dedicated. By then the countries had become true allies, this time fighting together in a devastating war. It was the moment some scholars say the special relationship actually began.
Epoch Times
01-05-2025
- Business
- Epoch Times
A Tax Man With Convictions and Courage
Commentary Have you ever heard of someone so principled that he quit his job rather than do something he knew to be wrong? I admire people of such integrity. We need more of them. Let me tell you about one whose story is especially relevant on April 15, the date the federal government demands we meet our income tax obligations. This man was head of the IRS. His name was T. Coleman Andrews. Born in Virginia in 1899, Andrews possessed a head for numbers. He loved accounting, an affection which I personally could never understand. Accounting baffled and frustrated me during my undergraduate days; I scraped by with a 'C.' I agree with whoever described an accountant as 'someone who solves a problem you did not know you had in a way you don't understand.' Andrews was not only good at it, but he also founded several successful accounting firms and worked in high accounting positions for the Commonwealth of Virginia, the U.S. State Department, and the General Accounting Office in Washington. In 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower appointed him Commissioner of the Bureau of Internal Revenue. In an interview while still new in the job, Andrews said that he would insist that every employee engage taxpayers with 'a sincere desire to be helpful,' but he promised to come down hard on anybody caught cheating on his taxes. Related Stories 4/17/2025 3/23/2025 Andrews moved to simplify complex tax forms. He changed the Bureau's name to what we know today—the Internal Revenue Service. He adopted numerous measures to improve efficiency, but when Congress overhauled tax law in 1955, he realized how 'unreformable' the system was. Isaac William Martin, in his 2013 book titled 'Rich People's Movements,' quotes Andrews as lamenting that the congressmen who wrote the bill 'do not themselves know what they mean.' Barely two years into his tenure on the inside, Andrews abruptly resigned. His views on the agency and the income tax had evolved. Andrews was one of those rare public servants who 'grew in office.' He could no longer hold a position that put him at odds with his conscience. He came to see the IRS and the tax code as oppressive, incomprehensible, and corrupt. Shortly after his departure from the IRS, he issued a statement explaining his position: 'Congress went beyond merely enacting an income tax law and repealed Article IV of the Bill of Rights, by empowering the tax collector to do the very things from which that article says we were to be secure. It opened up our homes, our papers and our effects to the prying eyes of government agents and set the stage for searches of our books and vaults and for inquiries into our private affairs whenever the tax men might decide, even though there might not be any justification beyond mere cynical suspicion. 'The income tax is bad because it has robbed you and me of the guarantee of privacy and the respect for our property that were given to us in Article IV of the Bill of Rights. This invasion is absolute and complete as far as the amount of tax that can be assessed is concerned. Please remember that under the Sixteenth Amendment, Congress can take 100 percent of our income anytime it wants to. As a matter of fact, right now it is imposing a tax as high as 91 percent. This is downright confiscation and cannot be defended on any other grounds. 'The income tax is bad because it was conceived in class hatred, is an instrument of vengeance and plays right into the hands of the communists. It employs the vicious communist principle of taking from each according to his accumulation of the fruits of his labor and giving to others according to their needs, regardless of whether those needs are the result of indolence or lack of pride, self-respect, personal dignity or other attributes of men. 'The income tax is fulfilling the Marxist prophecy that the surest way to destroy a capitalist society is by steeply graduated taxes on income and heavy levies upon the estates of people when they die. 'As matters now stand, if our children make the most of their capabilities and training, they will have to give most of it to the tax collector and so become slaves of the government. People cannot pull themselves up by the bootstraps anymore because the tax collector gets the boots and the straps as well.' Clearly, this was a guy who didn't allow power or a paycheck to turn either his brain or his spine into jelly. Agree with him or not, you must admit there's some impressive personal character there. Andrews continued to speak out against the income tax and the ever-bigger government it was financing. In 1956, he even ran for President of the United States on a third-party ticket—a campaign that, controversially, was built around a states' rights platform. While some saw it as a principled stance for limited government, others rightly noted its alignment with political figures and movements that defended segregation. He died in 1983 at the age of 84. The school in my native state of Pennsylvania where I struggled in that accounting class more than a half-century ago is Grove City College. In researching this article, I was proud to learn that in 1963, GCC bestowed an honorary doctorate upon T. Coleman Andrews. What Andrews had to say may not be much consolation to you this tax season. Perhaps it will be of at least small comfort, however, to know that we once had an IRS Commissioner who saw the harm of the whole business and possessed the courage of his convictions to wash his hands of it. Additional Reading: ' ' ' ' ' ' From the Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Yahoo
27-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Fairfax County calls for increase to unemployment benefits for fired federal workers
FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va. () — There's a push in Northern Virginia to increase how much money recently fired federal workers get paid while on unemployment. It comes at the same time as we could see a hike in unemployment benefits for all Virginians. The Fairfax County supervisors who sent a letter to Gov. Glenn Youngkin and democratic leaders said Virginia's unemployment payouts are behind D.C. and Maryland's, and with many federal workers now applying for those benefits, they say now is the time to take action. 'The repercussions of these job losses are far-reaching,' said Fairfax County Board Chair Jeff McKay. Democrats bringing fired federal workers to Trump speech McKay and his colleague James Walkinshaw led several of their board colleagues in proposing, and sending, a letter. In it, they describe the help the workers are getting through unemployment claims as 'meager.' 'What Virginia offers today doesn't allow families to pay their mortgage, doesn't allow families to pay their groceries, doesn't help those small businesses who rely on those federal employees and contractors as customers to stay open,' Walkinshaw said. In Virginia, unemployment benefits are capped at $378/week. In Maryland, it's $430/week. In D.C., it's $444/week. Walkinshaw said what makes federal workers' claims unique is that they are reimbursed by the federal government, making now a good time to increase the amount. Cherry blossoms near peak bloom at the Tidal Basin 'It costs the Commonwealth of Virginia nothing to increase the maximum unemployment benefits for these federal employees,' he said. The letter outlined potential improvements. 'Improvements could include dedicating a portion of the Commonwealth's surplus to provide an additional $600 per month to those affected by these federal cuts, mirroring the supplemental benefits extended during the COVID-19 pandemic,' it reads. 'This benefit should extend to all Virginia residents impacted by federal cuts, including part-time, self-employed, and gig workers, and those whose place of employment is outside of Virginia.' The Virginia General Assembly recently approved a measure that would have increased everyone's unemployment benefits by $100/week. The governor sent the bill back, amending it to a proposed $52/week increase. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
25-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Transgender sex offender claims ban from women's bathrooms violates 'civil rights'
A transgender registered sex offender in Virginia facing charges for allegedly exposing himself in a women's locker room told police officers that barring him from public facilities would violate "civil rights." Video obtained by ABC7 News staff showed 58-year-old Richard Cox being confronted by the police on Nov. 16 outside the Oakmont Rec Center in Fairfax County. This was one day after Fairfax County began a process to bar Cox from all county rec centers upon discovering his rap sheet. In the police body cam footage that was released on Feb. 16, Cox claimed that utilizing his name on the sex offender registry was a "criminal misuse" of the law on par with banning Black people from public facilities. "They don't agree with you exercising your civil rights, so they try and make a criminal action out of it…Just to give an example, back when they didn't want Black people in certain places, if they called the police and said, 'hey we have asked this person to leave,' you guys realize that was because he was Black," Cox told police in the footage. Massachusetts Town Votes To Become A Transgender 'Sanctuary City' After Wild City Council Meeting Although ABC7 News reported that most court documents list Cox as a male, Cox insisted that he identified as a transgender female and should be allowed in women's restrooms. Read On The Fox News App "My understanding of the sex offender registry, because I understand that they're concerned about my history and that's the reason they're banning me, and my understanding of the sex offender registry is it is a tool to be used to prevent any sort of future criminal offenses," Cox argued. "Now, my civil rights as a transgender person allows me to use a public facility including the restrooms or changing rooms that identify with my gender, and you can see on my ID that I'm recognized by the Commonwealth of Virginia as female." "So exercising my civil rights is not a criminal offense," Cox continued. "So them pulling up my information on the sex offender registry and using it to stop me from exercising my civil rights as a transgender person is a criminal misuse of the sex offender registry. They can use that registry to try and stop someone from committing a criminal offense, which I was not doing." "I was only exercising my civil rights, which they are completely and entirely opposed to. And they criminally use the sex offender registry against me. That should be for a judge to decide." Despite police officers confronting Cox, no criminal charges were filed for the incident. The video came months after Virginia mother Jen McDougal and her 9-year-old daughter reported seeing Cox naked in the middle of the locker room in Arlington, Virginia back in September. McDougal described the incident as an "awkward and scary" moment on "Fox & Friends." Independent Voters Agree With Trump On Transgender Policies, Focus Group Shows McDougal said at the time that staff told her there was nothing that could be done because of Cox's status as a "transgender" individual. Cox currently faces more than 20 charges in Arlington after police discovered multiple instances of Cox allegedly exposing himself to women and children in another fitness center and high school. A preliminary hearing is set for March. Fox News Digital reached out to Fairfax County for article source: Transgender sex offender claims ban from women's bathrooms violates 'civil rights'
Axios
12-02-2025
- General
- Axios
The Commonwealth of Virginia is selling a Snoop Dogg snow globe
The Commonwealth of Virginia has a Snoop Dogg snow globe for sale on the government surplus auction site. Why it matters: It's only $2, as of this writing. Also, at some point, the state owned a Snoop Dog snow globe. State of play: An Axios Richmond reader alerted us yesterday to the Snoop Dogg snow globe listing on an online auction site that helps governments get rid of any surplus inventory. The site is often a treasure trove of mundane or bizarre listings that are somehow in the possession of local governments. Sometime one might see a full-sized school bus for sale on behalf of Chesterfield, other times it might be a massive diorama of a beaver den, which Henrico County inexplicably wanted to unload in 2022. This time, however, it's a Snoop Dogg snow globe, from the Snoop on The Stoop holiday line, according to our research. It's one of nearly 1,000 items recently listed for sale by the state, along with a wooden rolling pin, a suede handbag, a magnetic cat toy and aprox. 900 loose screwdrivers. Pick up for all the items is in Henrico. The state did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
