realloudoun

It’s time for a small thought experiment/reality test.

Let’s suppose a Democratic elected local official began a well-orchestrated political campaign against a private business solely on the grounds that, in his view, it charges too much for its products or services.

He denounces the high cost the company is charging in his “news[sic]letters” to constituents. He enlists other local Democratic officials to file an official complaint with state regulators over the high cost the company is charging. He uses official government resources to launch a drive to urge constituents to join in a petition campaign and add their names to a protest against the high price the business is charging and to attend a public hearing to repeat that same opnion.

What would we imagine in such a case the reaction would be of the local Republican Party, particularly its Tea Party wing, with its staunch support of free enterprise and denunciation of government interference and bureaucratic regulators?

Now with that thought experiment out of the way, is it too much to ask exactly why local GOP officialdom, to a person, has been staging a well-orchestrated campaign against the prices that the privately built and privately owned and operated Greenway is charging for tolls? Continue reading →

Demonstrating their usual flair for having it both ways, our all-Republican Loudoun Board of Supervisors is continuing its spin campaign on the recent budget vote, sending out a barrage of self-congratulatory “news[sic]” letters in which they assert simultaneously that:

(a) we have provided “much needed tax relief”

(b) we have provided “major enhancements” to the school budget

They have reached this conclusion not by repealing the laws of arithmetic, as natural a recourse as that might be for this Board given their recent failure to grasp the subtle mathematical fact that it takes 5 votes to constitute a majority on a board consisting of 9 members, but through the arguably even more natural recourse for them, namely lying. Continue reading →

The last time the Loudoun Board of Supervisors was run by that offshoot of the development industry known as the Loudoun County Republican Committee, in 2003–2007, it made a practice of ridiculing, harassing, and even threatening citizens who came to speak in opposition to their developer giveaways. (One citizen was told by a Republican supervisor that he ought to move to Canada if he didn’t like their pro-rampant-growth policies; another who tried to present a petition was literally threatened with a legal investigation on the supposed ground that the names were forged.)

The current all-Republican Scott York (R-Frequently At Large) Board is much smoother. They have merely drastically cut opportunities for public comment, Continue reading →

Last spring, in an effort to score some quick points with the Lyme disease loonies in the local Republican Party (notably our very our own right-wing religious fundamentalist, anti-evolutionist, Christian triumphalist, and Lyme loonie extraordinaire Michael Farris), our all-Republican Loudoun Board of Supervisors ordered up $10,000 worth of toxic chemical pesticides sprayed on hundreds of acres of county parks. More than 95 percent of the area sprayed was open fields, exactly where you’re not supposed to spray for ticks according to all the experts (since that is not where ticks are found — but it is where honeybees forage).

Moreover, since the available scientific evidence shows that (a) most people who are infected with Lyme disease from a tick bite are exposed in their own yards (b) spraying is ineffective in preventing Lyme disease transmission and (c) by far the single most effective measure people can take to protect themselves is simply to use insect repellent when outdoors and check themselves for ticks — it was clear that this was not only an environmentally destructive, financially irresponsible, politically motivated, and hastily conceived public-relations stunt, but was completely useless as well.

Still, you might think — if you didn’t know our all-Republican Board of Supervisors, that is — that there was some evaluation, analysis, scientific expertise, or even minimal brain activity that went into the selection of the particular parks to be hit with this chemical assault. Continue reading →

In a further development in Supervisor Ralph Buona (R-Ashburn)’s extremely subtle explanation for why he voted to oppose the tax rate that his own budget produced, then abstained on a re-vote, then voted for it on a second re-vote two weeks later, Serious Businessman Buona wants to make clear that even though he might have seemed thereby to have abandoned his original hypocritical stance against the tax rate, the fact that he finally voted for it does not mean he is for it.

As Leesburg Today “explained”:

During the April 3 meeting, Buona had to change his vote from no to an abstention so that a majority of supervisors present would be in support of the tax rate. At that time, he said he had put “too much blood and sweat” in the budget to see it go down without a tax rate, but said he felt more work could have been done to lower the rate. Despite an affirmative vote Wednesday, he still holds that position.

In other words, our esteemed supervisor wants everyone to understand that in contradicting his original self-contradictory position, he nonetheless remains committed to his original self-contradictory position, rather than his new self-self-contradictory position.

It’s good to know we have a politician with such strong convictions on all sides of the issue.