realloudoun

The Loudoun County Republican Party’s centralized spin control operation, which produces those very nice and strikingly identical “news[sic]letters” our esteemed county supervisors send out with tedious regularity filled with all sorts of folksy announcements about bake sales, community events, and other items having nothing whatever to do with their official duties while noticeably avoiding mentioning what the all-Republican Board of Supervisors actually is up to (it would just upset us), has apparently decreed that Supervisor Janet Clarke (R-Blue Ridge) needed an image overhaul.

BEFORE:
Corporate Clone Clarke

AFTER:
Country Casual Clarke

In place of Corporate Clone Clarke (her previous look), this month a fresh new Country Chic Clarke, posing against a bucolic backdrop, was unveiled.

Veteran political observers of course know that when a politician suddenly adopts a new costume it’s almost always . . . camouflage. If we didn’t already suspect Clarke was up to some new plans to undermine what’s left of Loudoun’s rural and scenic heritage at the behest of her development industry masters who bankrolled her election, this ought to leave no doubt!

Leave it to our local “newspaper” “reporters” to be scooped again by the Washington Post, which doesn’t even have a Loudoun bureau any more but still manages to run rings around our pathetic local papers.

The Post reports today that a grand jury has been impaneled by the special prosecutor investigating the misuse of office and government resources by Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio (R-Sterling). That is an unmistakable sign that the prosecutor has found sufficient evidence to seek an indictment.

Will Delgaudio resign if that happens? Or will Chairman Scott York (R) and his fellow members of the all-Republican Loudoun Board of Supervisors actually show some spine, guts, and moral integrity and call upon him to resign?

About as likely as Eugene being named the next pope.

Even on those rare occasions when members of our all-Republican Loudoun Board of Supervisors actually attempt to represent their constituents, they are no match for the rest of the ideologues on the Board, or of the party hacks and “business” representatives that Chairman Scott York (R-At Large) has packed all of the government commissions with in his ongoing show of gratitude to the Loudoun Republican machine for readmitting him to the fold in 2011 — and to the commercial developers who dumped half a million dollars into the 2011 election, nearly all of that going to Republican candidates.

A case in point was the Board’s vote last week to accept the recommendation of the Government “Reform” Commission, packed with party hacks and “business” representatives, and abolish a volunteer fire company that serves a rural part of Western Loudoun. Continue reading →

Neighbors who oppose the bait-and-switch stadium that a major Republican campaign contributor is seeking approval to build in the world’s worst location for the non-existent Loudoun Hounds baseball team were not amused by Supervisor Geary Higgins (R-Catoctin) shilling for the Hounds in his recent newsletter.

Geary told constituents how “great” it will be to have “a local ball club to root for” and offered to send a free Hounds bumper sticker to any resident who contacted his office and asked for one. Geary did not mention that he will soon have to vote on whether to approve a series of special exceptions and zoning amendments the stadium developers need in order to proceed.

The neighbors, who have organized a group to oppose the stadium, shot back on their blog yesterday: Continue reading →

Those paragons of fiscal rectitude, the all-Republican Loudoun Board of Supervisors, may be Scrooges when it comes to schools, arts and culture, or protecting Loudoun’s heritage and scenic values, but they certainly know how to throw the taxpayer’s money around when it comes to anything they can plausibly or even implausibly claim is boosting economic activity in the county.

It’s a great fig-leaf for lavishing $50,000 grants on well-connected Loudoun Republican Party apparatchiks, securing $80 million loans for major campaign contributors’ commercial development projects, and even — how convenient — picking up the tab so that Chairman Scott York (R-At Large, frequently) could spend a total of a month and a half traveling abroad last year on no fewer than five official junkets to Germany, England, and Taiwan.

Last spring, the county blew $20,000 Continue reading →