Tom McLaughlin

I have been a good boy this year. Well, most of the time. But this letter isn’t about me. I am writing to ask you to look kindly upon all the poor souls who struggle in their daily lives, who must deal constantly with hardship and strife, who deserve a little happiness this Christmas season. You probably already know the folks I’m talking about: They made the majority of our headlines in 2013.

I have been a good boy this year. Well, most of the time. But this letter isn’t about me. I am writing to ask you to look kindly upon all the poor souls who struggle in their daily lives, who must deal constantly with hardship and strife, who deserve a little happiness this Christmas season. You probably already know the folks I’m talking about: they made the majority of our headlines in 2013.

Dan Shaw — one of the community’s frequent contributors of letters to the editor, God bless you, sir, keep ‘em coming — has penned a Viewpoint this week that lays into a guest column that appeared in this space last week. Entitled “Better Pay For A Better Economy,” the piece advocated raising the minimum wage to offset its eroding value over time. Clearly Mr. Shaw doesn’t see things in quite the same way.The minimum wage, he writes, only drives up the cost of hiring for businesses, which in turn depresses job growth. As for the notion that a higher minimum wage could actually help the economy, Mr. Shaw proposes a phrase for that: “a lie.”

Santa’s not the only fella who has a need to check his mailbag nowadays. Over the past few weeks our post office and e-mail boxes have overflowed with missives that together make just the recipe for an easy-peasy column. Ho ho ho heck yeah.

With Christmas blockbusters flooding the movieplex, chances are excellent we’ll soon enjoy the familiar cinematic spectacle of squabbling, disputatious countries that push their disagreements to the brink, only for mankind to unite as one after space aliens swoop in from the galaxy’s outer reaches and start blasting everything to bits.

With the holiday season upon us, I find myself looking forward to Thanksgiving as much as, if not more than, other prominent dates on the calendar. Unlike Christmas, which can be such as big deal it becomes overwhelming, Thanksgiving is a time to enjoy the company of family and friends with no need for much fuss. (Except when it comes to preparing the evening feast, of course). Not to knock the virtues of our Dec. 25 holiday spectacle, but there’s a lot to be said for keeping it simple on this national day of thanks.

After the endless hyperventilating over Benghazi, and Fast ‘N’ Furious, and Solyndra, plus whatever else Fox News has been hyping for the past five years, opponents of the Obama Administration finally have found a real scandal to sink their teeth into — the scandalously bad rollout of the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare.

There are some things that stick in your craw no matter what, and at the moment there’s something stuck in mine. Last month, the Halifax County Board of Supervisors opted not to apply for a VDOT grant to build a two-mile extension to the Tobacco Heritage Trail. The reason for the rejection? The Board pleaded poverty, saying the county couldn’t afford to put up the local matching amount to qualify for the grant. And it’s true, the county constantly struggles with poverty — a poverty of imagination.

A week removed from the not-so-great Election of 2013, here’s a rundown of the winners and whatever passes for the opposite:

Now comes my favorite part of the election: when it’s over. And I get to pontificate on the meaning.