Yearly Archives: 2015

To vote or not to vote

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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

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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)!

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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.

Rep. Barbara Comstock – the closer (of governments)

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barbaraComstock

Northern Virginia’s Congressperson, Barbara Comstock (R-VA), doesn’t care so much about breast cancer, or a woman’s constitutional right of privacy and choosing when and whether to have a child – not as much as Barbara cares to impose her religious belief on everyone else — that a “person” exists at the moment of conception.

Barbara was ready to close down the government based on this superstitious belief.

Barbara believes no woman should have an abortion any time after that elusive indeterminate moment when conception has occurred. That’s the only way you can understand her public statement that Roe v Wade should be reversed.

Barbara is free to practice her religious belief but not in disregard of the constitution and laws that she swore to uphold that permit abortion. But she looks for her openings to squeeze and restrict a woman’s right of choice even while Roe remains the law of the land.

In 2012, when Barbara was in the General Assembly, she voted for a bill to require women to undergo transvaginal ultrasounds before having an abortion; she sought to discourage abortions. Continue reading →

Political brawling in Loudoun

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boxingBrawlFighters like politicians don’t always know when to step down.

Loudoun County Board Chairman Scott York is that kind of fighter who doesn’t know when to quit.

On about January 8, 2015, Scott said he’d put a lot of thought into whether he’d quit and decided his future “just didn’t include being Chairman for another four years.”

If Ali, a three time heavyweight champ, had listened to Doc Ferdie Pacheco, he might have gone out like undefeated heavy weight champ Rocky Marciano, physically intact, laurels strewn in his wake, without the humiliation of a drubbing by Leon Spinks and Larry Holmes.

York badly wanted those laurels from the Chamber of Commerce and he told them, rumors to the contrary notwithstanding, not to worry, he really wasn’t going to go for a fifth round to get elected.

The Chamber conferred on pug Scott York his desired “laurels,” and, no sooner did they rest upon his hallowed crown, did he throw a sharp left jab at his own integrity, and jump into the political ring, seeking re-election.

“Slippery” Scott is like a small club fighter who slips punches, shifts his stance to suit election year allies, tracks backward in the ring, the “Slippery” Scott shuffle, and, between rounds, his corner men treat his cuts, an expanding contributing entourage of developers, according to VPAP, including real estate developers, general contractors, highway contractors, building trades, excavation contractors, so they can have their hoped-for fifth round, more pay days by our County, for even more development. Continue reading →

Fools destroy trees

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What’s left after cutting down a 95 year old tree

What’s left after cutting down a 95 year old tree

While Joyce Kilmer said, “only God can make a tree,” he did not consider those fools who destroy these trees with glee.

In my home town of Lovettsville, Tree City USA, VDOT destroyed a 95 year old Maple tree, with leaves no lower than 10 feet above the ground.

The reason, they said, was to make a bike path 8 feet wide, when the distance from the base of the tree to the roadway where the path would be placed was 16 feet, twice the width of the path.

They destroyed a majestic Maple for no good reason – as VDOT does characteristically treat trees as “inconvenient” – for VDOT is of the school of dig and destroy.

Susan Clark said, “It was a perfectly good tree and they cut it at ground level.”

Briana N. Edelman said, “Why does everyone feel the need to cut down trees? Trees provide shade, cooling, prevent erosion, hold sentimental and historical value, clean the air, house birds, insects, animals….among so many other things.”

Trees also produce the oxygen we breathe. Some think that’s important.

When trees abut a stream or river, their root system holds the bank together, reducing erosion, and curtails the runoff of the killing chemicals, pesticides and herbicides, acting as a natural system of filters restraining pollutants.

Our problem is not, however, a single tree that once grew in Lovettsville.

We have an epidemic of foolishness beyond VDOT’s serial violations, among developers, and prominent individuals who prefer a “scenic view” over what is environmentally conscientious. Continue reading →

Law breaker

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kimdavisThe Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis from Kentucky is not the first public official to defy a court order based on her intolerance, religious or otherwise, nor to claim the constitutionally impermissible defense that God told her to do it.

In 1963, Alabama Governor George Wallace refused to allow black students to join Alabama’s lily white school system, declaring Alabama to be the “great Anglo-Saxon Southland,” justifying segregation as a defense against forming a “mongrel unit” should the South integrate. Governor Wallace referred to the 14th Amendment as the “infamous illegal” 14th amendment, and said, of the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown, “[l]et those certain judges put that in their opium pipes of power and smoke it for what it is worth.” Wallace explained, as has Clerk Davis more recently, “[O]ur grandfathers bent their knee only in church and bowed their head only to God.”

A federal judge ordered Wallace to admit those black students to his lily white school system. Rather than be carried off by the National Guard and be put in jail, Wallace backed down for, as we have seen throughout history, demagogic bullies and their arrogant threats often dissipate like a cloud of pipe smoke when tested.

Around 2002, in Alabama again, Chief Judge Roy Stewart Moore created a 5,280 pound granite reproduction of the Ten Commandments he had installed in the central rotunda.

Moore told the federal court that the purpose of the monument was to recognize “the sovereignty of God over the affairs of men.”

U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson said that, since the purpose of the monument was to signify the authority of God over all citizens, the Judge’s purpose was to establish religion and the monument had to be removed.

Judge Moore told the Court that he would disobey the court’s order. The other judges of the state supreme court, however, overruled their colleague, Judge Moore, and directed that the monument be removed.

Chief Judge Moore himself was then removed by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary. The State’s Assistant Attorney General argued that a Judge that disobeys a court order, “undercuts the entire workings of the judicial system” and is telling the public, “[i]f you don’t like a court order, you don’t have to follow it.”

Clerk Davis elected to follow in these dishonorable footsteps when she defied a court order instructing her to perform the ministerial function of her Court Clerk’s office and issue lawful and secular marriage licenses to same sex couples.

Clerk Davis said she refused “on God’s authority,” a transparent concession that she was really seeking to violate the First Amendment’s prohibition against establishing religion, by supplanting the lawful execution of her office with her personal religious belief and disregarding the Supreme Court’s decision that same sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. Continue reading →

Ban guns

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Rep. Zoe Lofgren, reviewing amendments to deal with Columbine, with her Special Counsel, John Flannery.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, reviewing amendments to deal with Columbine, with her Special Counsel, John Flannery.

Once again, the hand wringing commences in Virginia and across the nation.

Guns again destroyed a network of family, friends, of co-workers, and, in a city, Roanoke, where the victims were known and loved; indeed, many watched them killed on tv in real time.

Before the camera, a young popular reporter, Allison Parker, 24, and her cameraman, Adam Ward, 27, were shot dead; the shooter filmed the murders as well, and posted the carnage he created on line.

These deaths by gunfire will shortly be regarded as indifferently as the 20 children who were killed in Newton, Connecticut, those children killed at Columbine in Colorado, and those students killed at Virginia Tech.

Our nation’s sense of morality and of conscience has grown weak to the point of complicity in these murders for our failure to act to stem the flood of weapons that make any one that we care about more at risk every day.

Our elected “leaders” cower before the “new” NRA, a cultish front group for the firearms industry leaders who sit on its Board and who help fund the organization. Politicians fear that they will lose the approaching election without the NRA’s political support if they dare to think to say or do anything that might control gun violence in America. Continue reading →

The unwanted child

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Bobby

Bobby

What kind of life does an unwanted child have?

Years ago, I represented Bobby, 19, a red-headed boy, charged with killing a young Korean immigrant about his age, only two years older, in a Sterling dry cleaners in Loudoun County.

When Bobby was born, both his parents abandoned him at the hospital. His father had been discharged from the military because of his schizophrenia. So Bobby didn’t have a good start genetically either. His grandparents accepted him into their home but they kept Bobby in a closet and fed him like an animal. Bobby never walked quite right.

Bobby was finally adopted by a loving family in Loudoun, under another name, his background a secret to his parents. Bobby did well at school, wrestled on the team, had a job, and a girlfriend.

Bobby wrote an essay that he wished he had never been born, wished that his mother had an abortion.

He knew he was unwanted at birth – and for some time afterwards.

Bobby robbed the Sterling dry cleaners of $200 because he believed his girlfriend was pregnant – and he had this new responsibility – another unwanted child.

I fought to save Bobby from being executed when he didn’t want to be born in the first place. Bobby is alive, in custody, and eligible for parole.

Bobby’s story is not unique among unwanted children. Continue reading →

In your Facebook

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potbellypig

You’ve probably all noticed how, like the spreading tongues of flame, a fire of intolerant discontent burns off the reason of dissenters in Facebook (FB) groups with insulting in-your-face remarks, all too often for my taste, calling for intemperate action, unconcerned as to what the facts may be, or what ordinarily is considered right conduct.  Indeed, impetuous irresponsibility is the most obvious increasing characteristic of these FB group exchanges.

In my neighborhood, the greatest offender is “Lovettsville 20180.”

Amidst sensible posted discussions, someone strikes a match and we have an eruption of mostly macho trash talk threads that rival hunger strikes.

But the latest flare up comes from down Middleburg way – from a group named – “Middleburg Uncensored.”

It was about a sighting of two pigs.  Some say they’re pot-bellied pets.  Others insist they’re the scariest weightiest wild tusked boars that you’d ever care to imagine.

They were seen wandering in pastures.

One group wanted to approach the problem carefully:  “Save the pigs – and find the owner.”

But the gunpowder crowd knows what to do: “Kill the animals.”

This is a picture (above) of one of the terrifying “pig monsters,” courtesy Penny Loeb (copied and cropped – so you can better see the pig – from Penny’s FB post).

This is a pot bellied pig.  It’s a grass eater.  It’s eating grass.  Penny was a restraining voice of reason and caution, concerned to be deliberate in capturing these pigs.

But that was not to be the fate of one of these pigs. Continue reading →