On an RV tour of Virginia, former Gov. George Allen and Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares visited the Staunton Innovation Hub Tuesday evening.
Allen said the Shenandoah Valley contains individuals with wholesomeness and a great work ethic.
“What’s great about the people here is you understand what it takes to win,” Allen, who served as Virginia’s governor from 1994 to 1998, said to business owners and Hub officials gathered for a Happy Hour.
In introducing Miyares, Allen said Miyares works to ensure that Virginians have what they need and so that they don’t need to spend their money on lawyers.
“So when he says he’s ‘the people’s lawyer’ he really means it,” Allen said.
Miyares stands by parents, law enforcement, victims of crime and making sure schools and seniors are safe.
“This is an amazing Innovation Hub,” Miyares, a JMU graduate, said, after a tour of the facility with Hub co-founder Peter Denbigh.
According to Miyares, more than $1 million in tax credits are represented in the creation and innovation of the Hub, which 140 small businesses call home.
“In many, many ways that entrepreneurial spirit is the very, very best of what we are as Americans,” Miyares said.
Poverty is a default state of existence for humans, Miyares said, and the question is not why poverty exists, but how wealth exists.
Miyares said his work in Virginia includes building businesses up so that lives can be changed with the life-altering words: “You’re hired.” The words bring individuals out of poverty.
“Because, what I realized is, you do more to eradicate poverty than anything I could really do with government,” Miyares said of small business owners.
Two thirds of new jobs in the United States are created by entrepreneurialism and small business owners who employ 100 or less.
“Those are the backbones of our economy. So my attitude is how do we unleash the greatest job creating engine the world has ever seen: the American entrepreneur? That should be our attitude in government.”
Before visiting the Hub in downtown Staunton, Miyares and Allen visited the Frontier Culture Museum and attended the Rockingham County TRIAD Re-charting ceremony at JMU in Harrisonburg.
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Rebecca Barnabi
