"Here comes the Confederates"

[CSA Today]

http://www.thenews-gazette.com/inde...onfederates&catid=77:breaking-news&Itemid=395

 

[unionblue]

http://www.thenews-gazette.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1068:here-come-the-confederates&catid=77:breaking-news&Itemid=395

An estimated '60 people.'

I wonder how many of those people were residents of Lexington, who had already decided the issue of flying the CBF from public property?

Unionblue

 

[CSA Today]

An estimated '60 people.'

I wonder how many of those people were residents of Lexington, who had already decided the issue of flying the CBF from public property?

Unionblue

I reckon we can only wonder.

 

[unionblue]

I reckon we can only wonder.

Not really,

What is the population of Lexington, VA?

What do the Virginia Flaggers have to say about their members attending the event?

Did the SCV send any folks down to participate in the event? If so, what camps and how many from each?

Unionblue

 

[CSA Today]

Not really,

What is the population of Lexington, VA?

What do the Virginia Flaggers have to say about their members attending the event?

Did the SCV send any folks down to participate in the event? If so, what camps and how many from each?

Unionblue

Thanks for your interest, I'll keep you updated on any new information as it becomes available. In the meantime, I'm sure you will be happy to know that the "Stars and Bars" will fly from the state capitol in Raleigh, NC tomorrow in honour of Robert E. Lee's birthday.

 

[unionblue]

Thanks for your interest, I'll keep you updated on any new information as it becomes available. In the meantime, I'm sure you will be happy to know that the "Stars and Bars" will fly from the state capitol in Raleigh, NC tomorrow in honour of Robert E. Lee's birthday.

You are most welcome and thank you in advance for any updates you may find and post later.

As for myself, I am quite glad that the "Stars and Bars" flying from the state capitol in Raleigh, NC, is noted as such a rare event as to be noted on any calendar.

Unionblue

 

[Tin cup]

"Flaggers" bring no honor to anyone.

Kevin Dally

 

[unionblue]

After a quick check, the Virginia Flaggers state that 73 of their number (final count) showed up to the event.

The town of Lexington, VA, has a population of 7,042.

I wonder how many of the 73 flaggers are residents of Lexington?

Unionblue

 

[KeyserSoze]

Thanks for your interest, I'll keep you updated on any new information as it becomes available. In the meantime, I'm sure you will be happy to know that the "Stars and Bars" will fly from the state capitol in Raleigh, NC tomorrow in honour of Robert E. Lee's birthday.

And I expect that on February 8 the U.S. flag will fly from the state capitol in honor of William Sherman's birthday.

 

[Tin cup]

In your face tactics...THAT is all the Flaggers care about to use the CBF for. Robert E. Lee would tell you to take the Stars-n-Bars off the Capitol building, and put it away!

Kevin Dally

 

[AndyHall]

Apart from the local SCV camp, the flag dispute seems to be a mostly non-issue for Lexington residents. Folks may recall that at the time the ordinance barring non-governmental flags from city-owned displays was adopted, in September 2011, there was a marathon city council meeting with dozens and dozens of people getting up to address the council. Local media reported at the time that almost all Lexington residents who spoke supported the ordinance, those who lived elsewhere in the county were about evenly split, and those who traveled from outside the county (or from out-of-state) were uniformly opposed to it.

The Virginia Flaggers subsequently began a campaign to defeat the Lexington's incumbent mayor in the November 2012 election, but she was re-elected with a slightly higher margin than before, against the same challenger, who happened to be the only member of the council who'd voted against the ordinance the year before. Despite the campaigning by the Flaggers, I haven't seen where either candidate actually campaigned on that issue in 2012.

 

[Tin cup]

WHO are the "Confederates" in the article?

Kevin Dally

 

[unionblue]

WHO are the "Confederates" in the article?

Kevin Dally

Kevin,

As far as I can tell, it appears that all of the 'confederates' are either members of the organization calling itself the Virginia Flaggers, as they reported to have 73 of their members there while the news article said about 60 folks showed up.

Unionblue

 

[cash]

An estimated '60 people.'

I wonder how many of those people were residents of Lexington, who had already decided the issue of flying the CBF from public property?

Unionblue

The flaggers are not from Lexington. They're from the Richmond area.

 

[unionblue]

The flaggers are not from Lexington. They're from the Richmond area.

cash,

I know.

Sincerely,
Unionblue

 

[cash]

To show how silly the flaggers are, people are and always have been able to display confederate flags. The ordinance merely bans non-governmental flags from the city-owned light poles.

 

[AndyHall]

The SCV and the Virginia Flaggers have taken several approaches to reinstating the display of Confederate flags from city light poles on Lee-Jackson Day weekend. One was the "Boot Elrod" cmapaign to defeat the local mayor in her 2012 re-election bid, previously described. Another was a federal lawsuit that was repeatedly dismissed by the courts at both the district and appellate level, because (the courts found) the ordinance is equitable in as much as it applies to all nongovernmental flags, not just Confederate flags.

The third effort was a boycott of local businesses, begun in September 2011, intended to cause them to put pressure on the Lexington City Council to reverse its ordinance and reinstate the flags. Last year I had a Flagger contact me and gleefully report that a well-known local attraction in Lexington had closed, citing that as evidence of the boycott's success. That turned out not to be true -- the attraction had been struggling financially and in and out of bankruptcy for more than a decade -- but it did get me looking for evidence of whether the boycott had any observable effect on the tourism-related parts of the Lexington economy. Had the boycott -- as this person claimed -- caused a spike in local unemployment? (Answer: No.) Had there been a general drop-off in tourism-related business? The best data source I could find that was both comprehensive for the city and longitudinal over time was the city's annual financial reports, that give hard numbers on sales tax revenue, restaurant food tax revenue, and hotel/motel tax revenue. These numbers go up or down depending on actual sales, so they seem to be a pretty good indicator of how business is doing in Lexington.

I posted an update on the most recent numbers yesterday on my blog, and a CW Talk member has asked me to repost it:
____________

Expired Image Removed

Today is the Friday before the third Monday in January, and that means it's Lee-Jackson Day in Virginia. This seems like an opportune time to check in on Lexington, and see how the Virginia Flaggers' boycott of the city is going.

Long-time readers here will recall that, as part of their campaign to force the city council to reverse its September 2011 flag ordinance, Confederate Heritage™ advocates urged area residents and visitors to boycott city businesses as a means of putting pressure on the council.

When we last checked, the city had released its comprehensive financial report for FY2012 (July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2012), that covered a period for about ten months after the council vote and the initiation of the boycott. The results were pretty good for the citizens of Lexington, but not so good for those actively working to harm that city's tourist economy — business activity as measured by sales tax revenue, restaurant food tax revenue and hotel/motel tax revenue all improved substantially over FY2011.

Expired Image Removed

So how did things go in FY2013 (July 1, 2012 to June 30, 2013)? As it turns out, by those same measures, FY2013 was another good year for tourism-related business in Lexington. Here are the numbers from the city's Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for FY2013 (p. 91):

Expired Image Removed

Note that in each of those tourism-related categories, actual revenues exceeded the city's own budget projections by several thousand dollars (last column).

So after nearly two years of a tourism boycott led by local SCV leader Brandon Dorsey and promoted by the Virginia Flaggers, what's been the effect on revenues for the city? An increase of nearly $340K over FY2011 levels, led by a whopping 25.5% boost in restaurant food tax revenue in the past year alone:

Expired Image Removed

I know Dorsey and the Virginia Flaggers want folks to believe that Lexington has turned its back on Lee and Jackson — a claim that seems ludicrous, given those mens' prominence in local tourism literature (above) — but their boycott doesn't seem to be having any more more effect than the"Boot Elrod" campaign did in 2012, when the Lexington mayor was re-elected with a larger share of the vote than in 2008. Unemployment in Lexington remains higher than the national average, but it has been for a long time, since well before the flag ordinance, and is substantially lower than in September 2011. The reality is that Lexington's tourism-related business numbers are strong, and that part of the local economy is doing better than the U.S. national economy overall.

I sure hope Brandon Dorsey and the Virginia Flaggers decide to organize a boycott of tourism in my town; we could use the boost!
​

_________

 

[W. Richardson]

The SCV and the Virginia Flaggers have taken several approaches to reinstating the display of Confederate flags from city light poles on Lee-Jackson Day weekend. One was the "Boot Elrod" cmapaign to defeat the local mayor in her 2012 re-election bid, previously described. Another was a federal lawsuit that was repeatedly dismissed by the courts at both the district and appellate level, because (the courts found) the ordinance is equitable in as much as it applies to all nongovernmental flags, not just Confederate flags.

The third effort was a boycott of local businesses, begun in September 2011, intended to cause them to put pressure on the Lexington City Council to reverse its ordinance and reinstate the flags. Last year I had a Flagger contact me and gleefully report that a well-known local attraction in Lexington had closed, citing that as evidence of the boycott's success. That turned out not to be true -- the attraction had been struggling financially and in and out of bankruptcy for more than a decade -- but it did get me looking for evidence of whether the boycott had any observable effect on the tourism-related parts of the Lexington economy. Had the boycott -- as this person claimed -- caused a spike in local unemployment? (Answer: No.) Had there been a general drop-off in tourism-related business? The best data source I could find that was both comprehensive for the city and longitudinal over time was the city's annual financial reports, that give hard numbers on sales tax revenue, restaurant food tax revenue, and hotel/motel tax revenue. These numbers go up or down depending on actual sales, so they seem to be a pretty good indicator of how business is doing in Lexington.

I posted an update on the most recent numbers yesterday on my blog, and a CW Talk member has asked me to repost it:
____________

Expired Image Removed

Today is the Friday before the third Monday in January, and that means it's Lee-Jackson Day in Virginia. This seems like an opportune time to check in on Lexington, and see how the Virginia Flaggers' boycott of the city is going.

Long-time readers here will recall that, as part of their campaign to force the city council to reverse its September 2011 flag ordinance, Confederate Heritage™ advocates urged area residents and visitors to boycott city businesses as a means of putting pressure on the council.

When we last checked, the city had released its comprehensive financial report for FY2012 (July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2012), that covered a period for about ten months after the council vote and the initiation of the boycott. The results were pretty good for the citizens of Lexington, but not so good for those actively working to harm that city's tourist economy — business activity as measured by sales tax revenue, restaurant food tax revenue and hotel/motel tax revenue all improved substantially over FY2011.

Expired Image Removed

So how did things go in FY2013 (July 1, 2012 to June 30, 2013)? As it turns out, by those same measures, FY2013 was another good year for tourism-related business in Lexington. Here are the numbers from the city's Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for FY2013 (p. 91):

Expired Image Removed

Note that in each of those tourism-related categories, actual revenues exceeded the city's own budget projections by several thousand dollars (last column).

So after nearly two years of a tourism boycott led by local SCV leader Brandon Dorsey and promoted by the Virginia Flaggers, what's been the effect on revenues for the city? An increase of nearly $340K over FY2011 levels, led by a whopping 25.5% boost in restaurant food tax revenue in the past year alone:

Expired Image Removed

I know Dorsey and the Virginia Flaggers want folks to believe that Lexington has turned its back on Lee and Jackson — a claim that seems ludicrous, given those mens' prominence in local tourism literature (above) — but their boycott doesn't seem to be having any more more effect than the"Boot Elrod" campaign did in 2012, when the Lexington mayor was re-elected with a larger share of the vote than in 2008. Unemployment in Lexington remains higher than the national average, but it has been for a long time, since well before the flag ordinance, and is substantially lower than in September 2011. The reality is that Lexington's tourism-related business numbers are strong, and that part of the local economy is doing better than the U.S. national economy overall.

I sure hope Brandon Dorsey and the Virginia Flaggers decide to organize a boycott of tourism in my town; we could use the boost!
​

_________

It does show 2012 as a Great year !!! I have been to Lexington 5 times and have enjoyed my visits there each time. It is a nice friendly town. I have never observed too many "Bluebellies" there

Respectfully,

William

 

[CW3O]

After a quick check, the Virginia Flaggers state that 73 of their number (final count) showed up to the event.

The town of Lexington, VA, has a population of 7,042.

I wonder how many of the 73 flaggers are residents of Lexington?

Unionblue

Does the 73 include the cute liitle kid!. I'm sure she had a strong opinion in the matter.

 

[Rebforever]

General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson and General Robert E. Lee would have been proud!!