Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/28646
STAFF PUBLISHER Bill Bowman bbowman@upandcomingweekly.com ASSOCIATE PUBLISHERS Janice Burton Joy Crowe editor@upandcomingweekly.com STAFF WRITER Stephanie Crider stephanie@upandcomingweekly.com MARKETING/SALES Marybeth Leiby Marybeth@upandcomingweekly.com OFFICE MANAGER Tracy McCullough tracy@upandcomingweekly.com –––––––––––––– GRAPHIC DESIGNER Alicia Miller art@upandcomingweekly.com CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Soni Martin, D.G. Mar tin, Pitt Dick ey, Margaret Dickson, Bob Cogswell, John Hood, Jhana Lewis, Erinn Crider, Karen Poppele, Heather Griffi ths, Beth Solzsmon-Carpenter –––––––––––– Up & Coming Weekly www.upandcomingweekly.com 208 Rowan Street P.O. Box 53461 Fayetteville, NC 28305 PHONE: (910) 484-6200 FAX: (910) 484-9218 Up & Coming Weekly is a “Quality of Life” publication with local features, news and infor- mation on what’s happening in and around the Fayetteville/Cumberland County community. Up & Coming Weekly is published weekly on Wednesdays. Up & Coming Weekly welcomes manuscripts, photographs and artwork for publication consideration, but assumes no responsibility for them. We cannot accept responsibility for the return of unsolicited manuscripts or material. Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. The publisher reserves the right to edit or reject copy submitted for publication. Up & Coming Weekly is free of charge and distributed at indoor and outdoor locations throughout Fayetteville, Fort Bragg, Pope Air Force Base, Hope Mills and Spring Lake. Readers are limited to one copy per per- son. Subscriptions can be purchased for $30 for six months or $60 for 12 months, delivered weekly by first class mail. ©2007 by F&B Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction or use of editorial or advertisements without permission is strictly prohibited. INSIDE PUBLISHER’S PEN by JANICE BURTON For many of us, living within a budget is not a new concept. We do it every day. At my house, I know to the penny how much money comes in, how much goes out and how much wiggle room we have. This is not a new concept, but with the ongoing budget debacle in Washington and in Raleigh, it seems as if it is. If the majority of us as normal everyday citizens were to run our homes and families the way our political leaders have been running the country, we too would be bankrupt. But most of us tend to understand the concept that you can’t spend what you don’t have (or at least what you can’t afford to pay back). I think the problem in dealing with the amount of money our government (local and national) deals with is that it ceases to become real and instead becomes more like, oh, I don’t know — Monopoly money. Think about it. If you’ve ever played Monopoly, you don’t mind paying thousands of dollars on a piece of property that just might pay off for you later in the game. Because in Monopoly if you spend all of your money, you can always sell your land (or in the case of my son, steal money from the bank). In Monopoly, we realize that the money isn’t real, so we act foolishly with it. We gamble on the chance that our ship might come in. Unfortunately, the leaders we’ve trusted to take care of our nation’s fi nancial well-being have been making the same gamble, but with people who don’t necessarily have our best interest at heart. When I play Monopoly with my son, if he gets into the hole a little too deep, I give him money from the pot. I don’t see China (our biggest lien holder) being that compassionate. And so instead of taking a proactive approach to our budget Fayetteville’s Weather Forecast Thursday April 7 Friday April 8 Saturday April 9 Fayetteville’s Weather Forecast woes, our leaders have instead continued to borrow and spend. It’s a vicious cycle that gets you nowhere fast. It seems that the light bulb has gone on in Washington and Raleigh, but there are still a lot of people in the dark. Don’t believe me? Then why is it April and the United States still doesn’t have an approved budget. Why is it that everyone is watching the clock tick away until April 8 to see if a compromise can be reached or whether or not hundreds of thousands of government employees will go home? Why is it in Raleigh that instead of sitting down at the table and making realistic cuts and compromises that will benefi t the entire state, partisan agendas are being pushed to the forefront? It kind of reminds me of that old saying — “the light’s on, but nobody’s home.” So while our political leaders haggle and try to build a compromise that they can live with, teachers are being fi red, class sizes are expanding and money that we don’t have is being spent on programs that really haven’t changed anything in the past 65 years. It’s time for a new approach in the way Americans, and particularly our leaders, look at money. If you don’t have it, don’t spend it. Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize. The clock is ticking. We all are watching. This isn’t Monopoly, and the money you are playing with isn’t yours. Spend it wisely, or be gone next year. JANICE BURTON , Associate Publisher. COMMENTS? Editor@ upandcomingweekly.com CalCall 910.354.1679l 910.354.1679 Sunday April 10 Monday April 11 Tuesday April 12 Calendar ........................................... 14 Concert Connection ........................ 20 Movie Review .................................. 22 Free Wheelin’ Feelin’ ....................... 23 Classifieds ........................................ 24 News of the Weird ........................... 26 Horoscopes/Advice Goddess ......... 26 Games .............................................. 27 2011 Budget: It’s Not Monopoly Money High 77° Low 52° Sunny 4 UCW APRIL 6-12, 2011 High 80° Low 62° Partly Cloudy High 84° Low 61° Mostly Cloudy Forecast available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. High 85° Low 56° Partly Cloudy High 82º Low 56º Partly Cloudy High 76º Low 49º Partly Cloudy WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM 24/ 7