Yearly Archives: 2016

Lighting the fire

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[John P. Flannery appeared before the BOS on St. Patty’s Day to argue for full funding - https://youtu.be/QChPkkF0xo0

John P. Flannery appeared before the BOS on St. Patty’s Day to argue for full funding

There was an Irish poet, William Butler Yeats, who wrote that education is “not the filling of a bucket but the lighting of a fire.”

What should we spend as a government to spur a child to learn, and perhaps to “catch fire?”

Last year, we had a public discussion about full funding for our schools, and yet, here we are again, after an election, seemingly surprised that it’s going to cost us more again to get it right, and we are debating, once more, “Should we fully fund our schools?”’

Of course, we should. Spend the 2 cents!

We are prepared to fully fund everything else in the budget, at $1.15, but we’re hesitating about spending the funds on education, at $1.17, begrudging the 2 cents.

Our County invited families from far and wide to come to live with us in Loudoun County, and promised services if they did so.

Are we now going to say, forget it? Continue reading →

Eat local

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Paul Mock's Lettuce

Paul Mock’s Lettuce

Increasingly, folk want to eat local, safe, fresh, organic greens and meats with no additives or pesticides or antibiotics or GMOs for fear of what is known and yet unknown about their effects.

While runaway development everywhere threatens this effort to go green and fresh, pricing small farmers out of the market, nevertheless, the public appetite for good and better food is growing, and people are prepared to pay more to eat better.

At a Rural Innovation Confab in Winchester last Thursday, Lovettsville’s goat cheese meister, Molly Kroiz, said “real cheese tastes better, and people are tired of eating Kraft singles.”

Molly said cheese is a “combination of science and art” and allows for experimentation that lends a pleasurable flavor from how you make it, and where it’s made. Molly’s place is a farmstead meaning that she milks the Alpine goats, who forage on her rich pasture, and at this same farm, her husband Sam and she make the cheese. Molly said, “This quality is called, ‘Terroir,’ the taste of place.”

Some talk as if California is a “local” market, but a market truly local allows a farmer who favors craft to produce food that can be distributed close to the farm and consumed fresh. Continue reading →

The desperate candidates – and their party

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gopPresDebateWhen did the Republican presidential primary become a Bravo Reality TV series – “the Desperate Candidates?”

We have trash talk from a bombastic billionaire developer, Donald Trump, putting down the “Republican Establishment,” and those, who he convincingly says, are his “establishment” competitors.

In the latest round of churlish misconduct, Trump blasted one opponent based on his height (“little Marco”), countered by the charge that Trump was a crook (“con man”) according to Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, prompting Trump to come back on Senator Cruz (“lying Ted”), and Senator Rubio’s toe-curling grammar school innuendoes followed, knocking Trump’s face, hair and, the most controversial, Trump’s sexual prowess (“small hands”), causing Trump to offer a national on-air description of his private body parts (“no problem there”).

In Loudoun County, despite Senator Rubio’s “below the belt” rhetoric, he was enthusiastically invited to Patrick Henry College to rally his true believers at a school founded “to impact the world ‘for Christ and for Liberty.’”

At the rally, Senator Rubio promised to compromise the medical care anyone was receiving under the Affordable Care Act, to step up the war on terror, to keep Guantanamo open and to “find out everything they [the prisoners there] know,” without saying precisely how he’d make that happen within the law and “as a devout Christian.” Congresswoman Barbara Comstock touted Rubio as “the most conversant on all of the top issues of the day.”

The Republican presidential candidates, including those deeply mired in this dehumanizing dialogue, undeservedly affect a moral superiority as compared with Trump. Continue reading →

Begin the world over again

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mlkMarchingTom Paine wrote that our new nation had the opportunity “to begin the world over again.”

This election year, voters seem to want to do just that – but the ratio of incomprehensible noise to common sense has been five to one.

The Reverend Martin Luther King said, “Let us be those creative dissenters who will call upon our beloved nation to a higher destiny, to a new plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humaneness.”

When marchers walked on Martin Luther King’s Day from the court house to the school house. the diverse community of warmly bundled marchers, were conscious that their only inconvenience was the wind and weather.

The march in Selma, Alabama, however, was conducted at some risk, and helped to win the voting rights legislation in 1965.

Selma succeeded because, as King described it, a “stubborn sheriff” acted so wrongly in handling that protest, he “stumbled against the future.”

The Reverend King was focused on what was just and fair, on equality, and the guide for his activism was the non-violence of Jesus and of Gandhi.

After Selma, King said that, “Occasionally in life one develops a conviction so precious and meaningful that he will stand on it till the end. That is what I have found in nonviolence.”

Anticipating his own death, King said in the Ebenezer Church in Atlanta, that he identified with those who were poor and hungry and, “[i]f it means dying for them, I’m going that way, because I heard a voice say, ‘Do something for others.’”

The challenge for our nation, in his mind, was human rights. Continue reading →

Unprotected text

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iosEncryptionIf you have a cell phone with robust encryption, it may deny entry to unwanted intruders who wish to rifle through your most personal information.

Our government prefers to be opaque when it comes to telling us what it’s doing, and yet is astonished when we cherish personal privacy, and defend it with various tools including encryption.

According to former CIA analyst, Edward Snowden, a fugitive somewhere in Russia these days, our government didn’t ask permission or authority when it invaded our Google and Yahoo accounts, nor when the NSA helped conduct global surveillance programs in conjunction with pliable Telcom companies and foreign governments.

When we were a collection of colonies, English authorities sought to enforce the tax laws using “writs of assistance” to enter any house they chose, to look for “contraband,” and to demand that you help them to invade your privacy.

When we won our revolution, we wrote a bill of rights to guard against these unwarranted invasions.

But now our privacy can be compromised without physically entering a home, given modern technological “progress.”

Aldous Huxley wrote, “Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.”

In a fairly recent Supreme Court opinion, Riley v. California, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote that ninety percent of Americans have cell phones and they contain “a digital record of nearly every aspect of their lives — from the mundane to the intimate.” Continue reading →

Why doesn’t Loudoun have a drug court?

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John P. Flannery was a federal drug prosecutor in the Southern District of NY, and has served on various drug task forces]

John P. Flannery was a federal drug prosecutor in the Southern District of NY, and has served on various drug task forces]

There is a frenzy among elected officials, seeking to discourage drug use and addiction, including street heroin and prescription drugs, but they mostly bypass drug kingpins, and go for arrest stats instead, chasing the victims of the drug trade, the addicted.

Our current law enforcement policies come awfully close to criminalizing an individual’s status, as an addict, when we know well an addict likely can’t help himself, and may commit other crimes to afford his fix.

In the case of prescriptions, law enforcement resists the critical and fine distinction that a chronic pain patient may be dependent on pain medication to function and the treating doctor is healing rather than dealing prescription drugs. As a former federal prosecutor from New York, I learned early on that drug dependency would never be solved by prosecuting the victims. But it’s easy pickings to criminalize young users and addicts.

There is a partial solution to our drug problem in this County and it’s a Drug Court.
When this was proposed years ago, the County Board of Supervisors said they didn’t want to coddle these “criminals.” In recent days, Republican Delegate Randy Minchew introduced a bill (HB 180) in the General Assembly to create a Drug Court for the City of Winchester, and the Counties of Frederick and Warren, but not for Loudoun. Why is that? Continue reading →

Don’t go near that water

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pastor Guy Johnson

pastor Guy Johnson

The lead infused water crisis in Flint, Michigan has inspired Pastor Guy Johnson, who does outreach for the Loudoun Soil and Water Board in Loudoun, to raise funds to help the children and their parents in Flint.

“This is an issue of human rights,” said Guy, “Clean water is a human right, not a privilege. Poisoning our citizens is not acceptable. If ISIS had done this, it would be called ‘terrorism.’”

In April 2014, Governor Rick Snyder’s Emergency Manager overrode Flint’s Mayor and the City Council, switching the water supply from the Lake Huron water treated by the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, to the Flint River, so they could cut costs; Snyder’s Manager didn’t spend a dime to add chemicals to the Flint river water to offset the water’s corrosive effect; as a result, lead leached from water pipes and fixtures into the tap water the citizens drank.

Lead is toxic, not safe at any level in humans, and can cause nervous system damage, stunted growth, kidney damage and delayed development; its effects are most severe on developing brains and the nervous systems of children and fetuses; it can effect reproduction among adults; it is a likely carcinogen.

It is estimated that 8,657 children in Flint drank this toxic tap water, and there is no estimate how many pregnant women living in Flint, or who visited Flint, also drank the water.

Guy said, “I’m angry because these children are doomed to a life of unrelenting medical care. How is it that, in 1978, we took lead out of paint, but we have lead in water in 2016? That’s why I’m raising this money, to help these poor people.” Continue reading →

Historic bridge remains at risk

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johnLewisBridgeYou may wonder what happened to that historic one-lane bridge on Featherbed Lane that VDOT seemed inclined to alter or destroy.

Well VDOT is having another meeting on February 9, 2016, at 6 p.m. at the Old School in Waterford, and the bridge is still on the chopping block.

There is an effort by the Catoctin Creek Scenic River Advisory Committee to preserve the bridge’s historic standing and maintain its listing in the National Registry of Historic Places and in Virginia Landmarks Registry.

In 2003, VDOT “hot zinced” the bridge to preserve it and instead made the bridge more brittle.

According to the Advisory Committee, VDOT now admits that may have been the wrong thing to do.

The challenge is to repair the bridge consistent with the recommendation of Virginia’s Department of Historic Resources.

Marc Holma, the Architectural Historian, for the Division of Review and Compliance, wrote on behalf of the Department, that “the Architectural Evaluation Team decided that only Alternative 2A [of VDOT’s proposals] would preserve enough of the bridge’s historic design and materials to keep it listed in the NRHP [Nation Register of Historic Places].”

johnLewisBridgePier

The Advisory Committee would prefer that this Alternative 2A not have a pier as when there are storms, trees and branches, they accumulate around the pier. The current configuration of the bridge has no pier.

The Advisory Committee said that you have to go out there after every storm clearing out the log jam when you have a pier or piling.

VDOT is distressed that trucks weigh too much and may have trouble clearing the upper trusses.

One resident asked why is a truck traveling on that road, much less the bridge.

Is this really a way to create new paved roadways to facilitate more development, rather than preserve and protect this charming back road and historic bridge?

On the northeast side of Featherbed Lane, just over the bridge, there is Waterford Downs, a development slated to have 93 homes on 3 Acre lots, with 5 built already.

For trucks to avoid the dirt road and the historic bridge, in order to get to the development, requires that the trucks go around on other roads, taking an additional 45 minutes.

These narrow dirt roads are not meant for such heavy traffic.

One member of the advisory committee suggested that, if the bridge is revised and widened, then the dirt road may be next to be widened and paved.

It remains a bitter irony that, while the bridge was named after a preservationist, John G. Lewis, its own chance of preservation is at high risk.

Mr. Lewis had been the local regional representative for the Virginia Historic Landmarks Commission, now known as the Department of Historic Resources.

John spearheaded the Scenic River designation for Catoctin Creek that flows beneath the bridge.

This tension may be resolved, either to preserve or destroy the bridge and its historic nature, at the meeting scheduled for February 9th in Waterford.

We should not squander another historic treasure. We have to make this work and save the bridge.

Del. Minchew tries to rig the Electoral College

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hb1181Republican Delegate Randy Minchew (VA – 10) wants to bypass the core principle of a democratic system, the popular vote, in our most important election, the selection of President of the United States, bypassing “one man, one vote,” with his new political math, where “one man, is worth a fraction of a vote.”

This is somewhat of a variation of how a slave, before we fixed our constitution, was a fraction of a man for purposes of a state’s representation in congress though he couldn’t vote at all.

Randy concedes a fraction of an actual vote in his House Bill, 1181, but that’s far short of the constitutional mark and of fundamental fairness.

The National Republican Party has a scheme to have several state legislatures rig the state elections where they expect to lose by the popular vote, and thus to cheat to improve their chances by changing the rules.

Where do the Republicans think they may lose? Continue reading →

Civilizing the savage man

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leoRevenant“Revenant” is a gritty and terrifying western about Hugh Glass, a 19th Century frontiersman, left for dead after a mind-chilling, grizzly bear attack.

Glass crawls and limps, near death, bleeding from open sores, suffering unremitting pain, across hundreds of miles, to find and to kill the man who abandoned him who was charged with keeping him alive; Leonardo DiCaprio gives an Academy Award-winning performance as Glass in Alejandro Inarritu’s amazing movie.

It’s a primal story of survival, devotion, relentless cliff-hanging danger, disaster, betrayal, torment, violence, revenge, and human savagery.

This is a vivid rear view reflection on a society with little use for law or custom.

This is a world, both primitive and elemental, played out before sweeping scenic panoramas so wild and untamed that life is continuously at risk, both from the natural surroundings but also from the savage man.

Aristotle wrote that, “At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separate from law and justice he is the worst.

In the movie, Revenant, man is at his worst.

Revenant is an excursion into savagery and teaches the value of law and civility. Continue reading →