Americans worried about this country’s manufacturing economy fret over three simple words: “Made in China.”

For good reason, they worry about what will happen to our economy if we don’t manufacture products in this country. The sting is even worse when existing domestic manufacturing is shipped overseas, costing American jobs.

Every election matters, but not always for the most obvious reasons. This year, Virginia’s gubernatorial contest will attract the most attention.

But in northern Pittsylvania County, the voters in the town of Gretna and the larger Callands-Gretna Magisterial District will be asked to vote on several questions about the sale of alcoholic beverages.

Once again, Danville’s political leaders are being asked to address complaints about Danville Regional Medical Center.

For the members of Danville City Council, those complaints are an ongoing problem without an easy solution. All the city can do is raise issues and ask questions.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine cancelled his trip to Grove Park Preschool on Thursday, but that didn’t stop the kids from showing off what they’ve learned about the basics of preventing the spread of flu.

It took two words — “You lie!” — from one disrespectful idiot of a congressman to drag the question of race, politics and President Barack Obama to the surface.

Danville-Pittsylvania County Habitat for Humanity is becoming known for building energy efficient houses.

Energy conservation is as important — if not more — than securing new, stable and domestically controlled fuel to power our economy.

Danville Mayor Sherman Saunders knows what’s at stake for the city next year. The 2010 Census promises to verify the city’s population drop that has been tracked over the past nine years.

For mayors like Saunders, the Census is a high-stakes project. More than a simple count of the population mandated in Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution, the Census has grown to become a way to determine the amount of federal assistance doled out to states, counties, cities and towns.

Danville and the developer of its newest shopping center, Coleman MarketPlace, have reached an agreement that will help some of the very people whose tax dollars built the shopping center.

The city’s Handy Van program — a bus service for the disabled — and the Reserve-A-Ride program will be allowed onto the shopping center’s property.

Danville’s Wendell Scott won’t be in the NASCAR Hall of Fame’s inaugural class — and it might take a few years before it gets around to honoring him.

By the end of this month, work will begin on a new road around Barkhouser Ford to link Piedmont and Riverside drives. That new road has to be ready before construction can start on the new Robertson Bridge.

For most of the time it will take to build the new road — at a cost of $558,975 — drivers won’t be inconvenienced. Once work starts on the new Robertson Bridge, though, the scale of the work being done in that part of Danville will be unmistakable.

Pittsylvania County ought to be big enough for the seven personalities that sit on the Board of Supervisors.

But with many votes ending in a 4-3 split between supervisors representing the “northern” and “southern” ends of the county, the question that has to be asked is what would happen if that delicate political balance was disturbed.

When it comes to government budget cuts, pain is relative. If you work for the government and you lose your job, those spending cuts hurt.

For everyone else, though, the specter of the government spending less money during a recession makes sense. The private sector has no problem freezing salaries, cutting jobs, making their employees take furlough days and other ways to get revenues and expenditures to line up.

Farmers have done their part. Their hard work, combined with thousands of years of experience and hundreds of years of scientific research, allow us to walk into a grocery store and pick out packages of food with little or no thought about what it took to produce that food.

America has survived, as America is wont to do, one of the latest threats to the republic — a speech by President Barack Obama to the nation’s schoolchildren.

Virginia’s study of uranium mining finally has the funding it needs to move forward, thanks to the only entity that ever offered to pay for it.

Virginia Uranium Inc. Chairman Walter Coles Sr. long ago said his company would pay for the state study. With the commonwealth unwilling to fund the study and no one else waving their checkbook around, VUI money was the only way to move this issue forward.

President Barack Obama is getting ready to fight the good fight on health care reform.

Based on the local town hall meetings held by Rep. Tom Perriello, D-Fifth District, it’s obvious that people are concerned about two things: They want the same quality care they’re used to getting, and they want costs controlled.

Unemployment remained high — and steady — in the Dan River Region in July even though it dropped in Virginia’s other nine metropolitan areas.

Same old, same old … right?

A long time ago in a master’s thesis tucked far, far away, GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell wrote things that, on the whole, demonstrate that he’s a conservative, religious Republican.

Of course, anyone who knows anything about McDonnell knows he’s a conservative, religious Republican. His concern for what is often referred to as the “social issues” facing our country is obvious.

Most Danvillians don’t know the legal definitions of zoning districts like Multifamily Residential, Transitional Office and Highway Retail.

But they know about House of Hope’s controversial move to the corner of Ridge and Patton streets in downtown Danville. Members of the downtown community and their supporters were angered when that happened.

North American Properties, the developer of Coleman MarketPlace, promises to “reopen our dialogue with city officials working to improve access for all” visiting the region’s newest shopping center.

The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond recently toured local industries and gave a speech to a small group of local leaders in the fields of education and philanthropy.

Cash for Clunkers is scheduled to end today. The program provided a financial incentive to the owners of older, inefficient, polluting vehicles to trade in at a time when the nation’s car manufacturers and dealers were struggling.

Before the program started, the conventional wisdom was that only a few Americans would be able to buy a new car during this recession.

‘Congress shall make no law …” we’re told in the First Amendment, “… abridging the freedom of speech … or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

That sounds a lot like a Danville Tea Party event.

Dogs die. They get hit by cars. Sometimes they run off, chasing their noses — never to be seen or heard from again.

Pittsylvania County’s high schools will be ready for students next week. The renovation of the four Kennedy-era buildings is far from finished, but students will be able to get back into the buildings in time for classes to start.

Danville’s economy is changing — and that will make it tough for this year’s gubernatorial candidates to sell their economic development plans.

While the Dan River Region still has the state’s highest unemployment rate, the community has the potential to quickly grow when the economy finally picks up.

A large and unusual piece of Danville’s history was carefully removed from the Danville Register & Bee’s Monument Street building Friday for a trip to its new home in the Municipal Building.

The painting depicts the introduction of Lady Nancy Witcher Langhorne Astor to the British House of Commons by David Lloyd George and Arthur James Balfour.

Welcome to Compassionville. Here in Compassionville, we worry about a lot things that don’t make a lot of sense.

Take that 73-year-old woman who had the gall to wonder why the shopping center that Compassionville spent $7.8 million to make a reality won’t let the city set up bus stops.

Danville’s taxpayers spent $7.8 million to make Coleman MarketPlace a reality.

Since the state didn’t give incentives for retail developments, the city had to come up with that money in a package that included the construction of a new bridge.

The debate over Coleman MarketPlace was a spirited one, but at no time did it ever include any discussion of whether Danville’s buses would be allowed to establish stops in the shopping center. The assumption was that Coleman MarketPlace would become a part of Danville’s public transportation system.

That assumption was wrong.

Bradley S. Rees was the first candidate to announce that he was running for the Republican nomination for the Fifth District congressional seat.