Monthly Archives: October 2015

Hard knocks

braininjuryThe brain is not meant to be jarred, hit hard, nor to hit something itself.

A concussion, a brain injury, is not something to ignore – not on a pro football team, nor in student athletics, nor any other activity including car accidents, domestic violence, or a “simple” fall.

About 20 to 30% of all Americans have experienced one or more head injuries. If there are repeated head injuries, deficits in cognitive functioning may remain.

Little wonder, some parents are pulling their children from high impact sports; my parents did; President Barack Obama said, if he had a son, he wouldn’t let him play football; NBA all-star LeBron James said the same thing.

Local parents who wanted to have their sons try out special helmet sensors were rebuffed by our County’s schools; it was a light weight micro-electromechanical, tri-axial acceleromoter capable of measuring acceleration from any direction, attached to the helmet, interfering not at all in the field of play. Good enough for the pros, but not for our kids. A no-brainer you might say. Continue reading

To vote or not to vote

voteThis year we have we have many elective posts in Loudoun County that will be filled with candidates in opposition to each other for the countywide board of supervisors, for constitutional offices, for the school board, for the soil and water board, and for the general assembly.

These offices generally and specifically determine policy that intimately affects the lives of each and every person living in the County.

But many won’t vote.

Indeed, it is highly likely that non-voters will determine the election by failing to vote; the number of non-voters is so large, it’s often referred to as the party of non-voters.

One observer noted that maybe what we are losing among the non-voters are a disproportionate number of the uninformed and uneducated who wouldn’t vote intelligently anyhow.

That may sound harsh but there is data that those with more schooling and more income are much more likely to vote in any election.

Thomas Jefferson once said, “A nation that expects to be ignorant and free expects what never was and never will be.” Continue reading

The new police rat app

ratjfAbout a week ago, our Lovettsville Mayor passed along to the community a bulletin from the Loudoun County Sheriff, Michael Chapman.

It was billed as the “launch” of “the first-ever law enforcement app for Loudoun County.”

It shouldn’t have ever been launched.

By way of background, this app is “available on the iTunes App Store (IOS) and Google Play (Android)” and “will allow “users” who download this app, according to the Sheriff’s release, “to be able to submit crime tips anonymously, including the ability to send photos and videos from their smartphone.”

You may wonder what the Sheriff means by a “tip.”

Well, the Sheriff confirmed it’s not a “crime in progress.”

Without any standards whatsoever, citizens are being invited to say what they think is “suspicious,” based doubtlessly on incomplete information, little or no investigative experience, personal bias, rumors, overheard conversations, maybe even an unconsented taped conversation, and, finally, by forwarding this “packet” of “tip” text, with accompanying stills, audio and video documents – all done anonymously.

This “first ever” initiative is like the “Sound of Music” come to Loudoun – inviting us to mimic the misbehavior of that Nazi twit who turns in his girlfriend’s Von Trapp family.

We have tried before having something like a Stasi volunteer network.

After 9-11, the federal government invited us one and all to rat out “suspicious” neighbors or “strangers.”

But 95% of those “tips” turned out to be nothing at all.

Worse, it is daunting to imagine our Sheriff’s Department having the wherewithal to consider whether these anonymous tipsters have an axe to grind, a motive to hurt or slander another, or whether they are just plain reckless.

Other communities have recoiled at such law enforcement techniques. In Boston, the community started wearing t-shirts that read, “Stop Snitchin’.’” Continue reading

The developers are coming (again)!

handshakeIf you’ve looked around, you’ve seen our rivers overrun and mud and dirt flowing across the road. It’s because we’ve had a lot of rain in recent days. We may be surprised and concerned at these torrential conditions. But the real problem is – it could get much worse if some developers have their way.

The Developers want to build on steep slopes and in flood plains, now prohibited.

Our Board of Supervisors is considering allowing them.

The name, flood plain, is self-descriptive. If either side of a stream or river is prone to flooding, then it’s a flood plain.

As a trial lawyer, I imagine someone building in a flood plain, their home then flooded, and asking, “How did that happen?” Answer: – our Board of Supervisors changed the ordinance because that’s what their contributors wanted.

Of course, more happens than a homeowner or commercial business getting flooded.

If a storm water pond floods, it’s likely to send polluted sediment and water downstream.

If waters overrun a parking lot in a flood plain, you can have toxic run off from the vehicles.

If you have barrels of petroleum, consider the disaster should that petroleum be carried off downstream.

An area is declared a flood plain as a buffer, with limited uses, as a guard against having to clean up, at taxpayer expense, should one build in that area.

As for steep slopes, have you ever tried to plant cover on a steep slope. If you don’t have something that holds that soil together, everything you plant (dumbly) will just run down hill.

A “steep slope” is an incline greater than 25 degrees. That slope has a high potential for erosion and mudslides. What do you think would happen if you were to place a development on or below a steep slope? You’re right. Disaster.

Could some engineer re-make the contours of the land? Sure, I suppose, by destroying what exists, but such development is destructive and that’s what the current County policy acknowledges, and prohibits.

So why should we change either our ordinance limitations on flood plains or steep slopes, since they appear to be quite responsible? We shouldn’t.

The Citizens have already recoiled from the Board’s proposals to modify the steep slopes prohibitions, so the Board retrenched, directing the County Staff, “the Imagineers” (you might call them), to come back and present “a compromise.”

How in the world do you think that “compromise” can work?

The truth is the Board is delaying, waiting for a Hail Mary pass, because they are inclined to do what their bosses, the developers, want, and to push this round peg through a square hole– at a date to be determined – if we don’t fight them and stop this wrong-headed revision.

Our Board, transparently lackeys for the developers, want Loudoun County to be “more business-friendly,” so they say, by making more land available for commercial development.

The Piedmont Environmental Council (the PEC) issued an alarm, rightly declaring, that these proposed changes are plain wrong, and, as for Loudoun County becoming more “business friendly,” the PEC says, “that storyline just doesn’t add up. Loudoun has significant vacant commercial space, and more than 3,100 acres of commercially zoned land (greater than 50 million square feet of space) on the market that hasn’t been built yet.”

So what’s the real story?

On the off chance this Board is not returned to office, a much hoped for electoral result, they are going to reward those developers who brought them to the dance, by passing these revisions.

Don’t wait until the election to vote them out of office, appear at the public Board hearing on Flood Plains on October 14 at 6:00pm, and tell them to represent the public interest, and not the Developers.