realloudoun

Being elected a member of the all-Republican Loudoun Board of Supervisors has an astonishing effect. One day a man is an ordinary mortal; the next day he is a universal authority, holding forth to his subjects — excuse me, constituents — on all manner of topics about which he knows absolutely nothing.

Thus Supervisor Geary Higgins (R-Catoctin), in his latest “news[sic]letter,” pontificates at length to share with us his latest “knowledge” about Lyme disease, supplied courtesy of the quack promoters whose businesses are driven by whipping up a continual mood of mass hysteria and ill-informed scientific nonsense about the disease. Continue reading →

The previous Loudoun Board of Supervisors went on record opposing the perennial push by Virginia’s road paving and homebuilding lobby to spent billions of taxpayer dollars on an Outer Beltway (also known as the Washington Bypass, the Western Transportation Corridor, the Tricounty Parkway, the Bicounty Parkway, the North-South Corridor of Statewide Significance . . .). This perennially ill-conceived plan would open up the rural transition area of Loudoun to development, dump unsupportable volumes of traffic onto Route 7 south of Leesburg, and do nothing to alleviate the area commuters’ needs for better east-west connections, where virtually all commuting traffic goes.

The all-Republican Board that came in last year made it its top priority to give the road lobby all it wanted. They reversed the previous Board’s opposition to the North-South Corridor; they reversed the previous Board’s actions which limited to four lanes any future expansion of Belmont Ridge Road and related pieces of the planned project. Meanwhile one member of the state Commonwealth Transportation Board (he had been a prominent state Republican official for 20 years) who raised a  well-founded objections to the project was forced off the board, and last month wrote an impassioned denunciation of the governor’s heavy-handed efforts to build this unneeded road, the lack of transparency and outright deception involved in it, and the way the CTB was being turned into a rubber stamp.

Yesterday, Loudoun Supervisors Chairman York (R-At Large) dispatched his aide Robin Bartok to the Leesburg Town Council to issue one of the cheapest and crudest political threats in local politics in recent memory. Continue reading →

What a bunch of pikers our local Republican elected officials are here in Loudoun County, Virginia. While their state party leader, the Extremely Honorable Bob McDonnell, and his very acquisitive wife Maureen are scooping Rolex watches, $15,000 shopping trips to Bergdorf Goodman, rides on private jets, all-expense paid catered functions and vacations, and an endless supply of booze, food, and sundries for their college-age offspring, the members of our local all-Republican Loudoun Board of Supervisors content themselves merely with a couple of lousy trips to Germany or envelopes stuffed with $5,000 in cash delivered by local men of God.

Speaking of which, I know it’s expecting far too much of our local “news[sic]papers” to do something resembling journalism, Continue reading →

Claiming complete vindication and asking for a return to “civility” in politics, Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio (R-Sterling) held a press conference Monday at which he took no questions and had his lawyer demonstrate his newfound commitment to civility by immediately blaming the grand jury’s investigation of Delgaudio’s misuse of office, improper use of county staff for political fundraising, abusive and retaliatory behavior toward his aides, and receipt of large unreported cash contributions and corrupt bargains with campaign donors on the fact that good, decent Eugene takes “pro-family positions which offend some of the folks who live in Loudoun County.”

It will be interesting to see whether the rest of the all-Republican Board of Supervisors goes along with Delgaudio, as they have so far throughout the matter. Continue reading →

that’s Josh Whitlow (not “John”) who gave the $1,000 to Delgaudio