Monthly Archives: March 2012

Mar 23 2012
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Tax cut pandering, budgetary reality

It’s easy to blather airily about Cutting Your Taxes when you’re running for office; it’s another matter when you’re actually responsible for things.

Loudoun schools continue to add 3,000 pupils a year, thanks to the pro-rampant-growth policies of previous Republican boards

Even our extremely fiscally conservative highly businesslike new all-GOP board of supervisors seems to have found themselves helplessly facing reality this week.

Despite arbitrarily vowing to cut tax rates 5 percent, the board has discovered —mirabile dictu—the following little facts that stand in the way. Continue reading →

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Mar 23 2012
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Amateur hour

SO, a mere 30 years after Federal health authorities identified the cause of Lyme disease and began a complete program of education, monitoring, and prevention, our very own top leading medical authorities here in Loudoun County—I am, of course, referring to newly elected Republican supervisors Professor Geary Higgins (R-Catoctin), Dr. Janet Clark MD (R-Blue Ridge), and Herr Doktor Doktor “Ken” Reid (R-Leesburg)—have swung into action with their own “10 Point Action Plan” to combat this terrible scourge, proclaiming 2012 “Lyme Disease Awareness Year.”

“This has been neglected way too long,” Reid declared in one of a series of self-congratulatory pronouncements he made to fellow board members Continue reading →

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Mar 21 2012
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The $75,000 Curveball

One of the more curious contributors to local Republican coffers for the 2011 local election was one Howard Gary Heavin of Gatesville, Texas—which last time I checked is not near Loudoun County.

Curves Health franchise guru (and no slouch himself in the fitness department, apparently), local GOP state delegate David Ramadan

Heavin contributed a cool $75,000 to the successful campaign of Delegate David Ramadan. The connection between the two is apparently that Heavin is the CEO of Curves Health, a franchise operation of women’s fitness centers, and the Lebanese-born Ramadan is a Curves franchisee, as well as the apparent mastermind behind expanding Curves franchises to the Middle East and India.

I’m sure it was just an abundance of collegial pride in a protege doing so well in his adopted land that prompted Heavin to part with 75 grand.

On the other hand, it’s interesting to note that the very first Zoning Amendment approved by the new all-Republican board of supervisors here in Loudoun—one apparently so pressing to their agenda of making the county more “business friendly” that it could not even wait for the completion of the major zoning review ordered up by the board and now underway—was a little-noticed vote to add “health and fitness centers” to the list of permitted uses in industrial-zoned areas. Continue reading →

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Mar 20 2012
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3/100ths of a penny wise . . .

Yes, our highly efficient extremely businesslike all-Republican cost-cutting Board of Supervisors has certainly been showing everyone how to save money for the taxpayers in its first three months on the job!

Explaining that protecting water quality, promoting the rural economy, making sure that irreplaceable archeological sites are not bulldozed away, saving energy in government buildings, and keeping drug users out of jail and off drugs are not “core functions” of government, our very careful stewards of the taxpayers’ dimes have voted fearlessly to slash bloated government waste and inefficiency to the bone . . . to wit: Continue reading →

Mar 19 2012
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Government of money, by money, for money

Our highly efficient new Government Reform Commission, filled with such disinterested high-minded citizens as local GOP fundraiser Tom Julia, local Republican Party henchperson and larger-than-life Internet presence Barbara Munsey, and major GOP campaign contributor Scott Hamberger, has just published the list of issues it intends to reform in the name of making the county more businesslike and business-friendly. Continue reading →

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