You know links are fun, you know you want to click through, so go on, do it.

To simplify the above into two slightly misleading sentences: The Lib Dems are New Democrats. Labour are union Democrats.

To simplify even further: The Lib Dems are in coalition with the Tories. This makes them Tories.

• U.S. Racial Wealth Gap Quadrupled Since Mid-1980s – We know that income inequality has reached French Revolutionary levels, so it stands to reason that racial inequality moves in concert considering the poverty rate among minorities. We’re lucky Sen. Webb is a leader on this issue.
• They’re Liberals, Not Leftists – Labour vs. Lib Dems in a nice, if ideological, explanation of British political parties.
• Round Two – If you haven’t been tracking the Ruth Institute saga on DailyKos, go read this. It is stunning that we are still defending the rights of women to have the same freedom of self-determination as men in public fora.
• Household Income in The United States – We’re pretty much all wealthy here in Loudoun. It doesn’t matter how rich you “feel,” the statistics show that the vast majority of us are in the top-third of household incomes in the U.S. Denial of that reality is at the heart of many of our rhetorical disconnects when talking about taxes, among other things.
• Student’s Arrest Tests Immigration Policy – I’ll say it, if you were brought here as an undocumented migrant as a child, by your parents, you should not have to face the same consequences as an adult who crossed the border illegitimately.
• Stories from the Frontlines – Collected testimonies on the real cost of the failed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

Our Board of Supervisors does all they can to gather input from the community before making important decisions about development. The hearings they hold are an opportunity to make your voice heard and influence how our county grows. Just in the past couple weeks, there have been hearings about Kincora and pedestrian traffic, for example.

This runs counter to the input philosophy of the previous Board of Supervisors, who saw the input of developer cash to their campaign coffers as the more important form of public input.

Which is why it is important for neighbors to come to a hearing tomorrow night on the next stage of the Dulles Town Center.

Dear Neighbor,

Please join us for an important community meeting on the Dulles Town Center rezoning proposal on Tuesday evening at 7pm.  The applicant, DTC Partners, will provide an update and answer your questions on their proposed development.  County staff will also be available to answer questions.  Many citizens in our district live in or near the Dulles Town Center property, and this community meeting will give you an opportunity to ask questions and provide your input.

Dulles Town Center has been designated as Loudoun’s urban center in the county’s Comprehensive Plan for many years.  The proposed development would fulfill this planned vision by rezoning portions of the land surrounding the Dulles Town Center mall to create a mixed use Urban Center with multi-family residences, retail, and office buildings.

Meeting details are listed below:

   * Date: Tuesday, May 18, 2010

   * Time: 7:00 p.m.

   * Location: Sterling Office, 21641 Ridgetop Circle, Suite 100, Sterling

There’s a map to the meeting below the fold.The proposed development at DTC, as noted in the announcement above, is different from developments like Kincora in that it is part of, and in line with, the Comprehensive Plan. The Dulles Town Center area is designed for high-density, mixed-use development, and is capable of managing the growth that comes with that development.

Next year the battles over development will be fought again as all of the Supervisors seats are up for re-election. It is likely that not all of the Supervisors will actually run for re-election, so we can expect that the developers and their allies who lost in 2007 will be focusing their efforts in 2010 to build campaign materials and tactics for next year. These opening skirmishes in campaign 2011 are fought at hearings like the one tomorrow night. That means we need to be there to hold the ground won three years ago, and insure that we do development well not willy-nilly.

Here’s a map to the hearing:

View Larger Map

Don’t forget to sign up to help out with the Relay For Life!

A choice quote from Loudoun’s own David Waldman.

The convenient fiction of the “secret hold” is that one’s fellow Senators agree not to hold an objecting Senator’s obstruction against him personally, so long as he contends that he’s objecting on someone else’s behalf. But why would anyone allow this fiction to continue? An objection is an objection, and it extinguishes an unanimous consent request just as surely as if the Senator allegedly objecting in secret had done it himself. So why permit obstructionists to hide behind a colleague’s cloak? – There’s No Such Thing As The Secret Hold

Weekend links follow.

• Just When You Thought The Virginia GOP Couldn’t Get Any Crazier – Dick Black eyes a comeback.
• Quality of Child Care Linked to Academic Achievement: Behaviors Persist Into Adolescence – As a parent looking into pre-school for our daughter, this one caught my eye. Of course, I believe HeadStart or an equivalent should be available to everyone.
• There’s No Such Thing As The Secret Hold – David Waldman once again advocates common sense in the face of Senate tradition.
• Message To Democrats – If you’re someone who gets frustrated with Democrats who vote against things like health care reform, don’t give up, support primary opponents for those Democrats!

As people who have become active in the past decade or so, we get tons of email from various organizations asking us to sign this petition or fax that senator, not to mention the constant “send $10” requests. In some cases, we even sign this, or send that if the request strikes us so.

Follow below the fold for some of the progressive solicitations we’ve actually responded to recently.

• Move The Game, MoveOn.org – I am a big baseball fan, and I believe that MLB should move the all-star game out of Arizona in response to the new immigration law there, since many of the players on the field would qualify for the “reasonable suspicion” request for ID papers.
• One click support for Employment Non-Discrimination Act – according to reports from the Hill, there are now more than enough votes to pass an inclusive ENDA, and it will soon be moving forward. Here’s a brief piece from Roll Call about why this is needed, and needed yesterday.

Despite the news that Loudoun will receive a mere $1,024 for fiscal 2011-2016 from the state, people living near roads slated for improvements were elated that supervisors still would move forward with plans. – Loudoun Times-Mirror

One of the things that has impressed me while I’ve lived in Leesburg and Loudoun is the fact that our roads have improved over the past ten years in spite of the state government. Local funds and developer proffers have been used creatively to make sure that critical interchanges and throughways were built to help alleviate the crushing burden of traffic we experience every rush hour. Meanwhile, the Republican-controled General Assembly tries to ignore the problem.

This year, a significant decline in fuel consumption, vehicle sales, registrations and the state’s sales tax collections has drained funding for Loudoun, VDOT officials said.

County leaders and members of the General Assembly are asking Gov. Bob McDonnell to call a special session to address the state’s transportation woes.

McDonnell campaigned on promises to fix the state’s transportation problems, but so far has failed to do so, they say.

“I hope everyone understands the sad state of affairs we’re in with this six-year program,” said Loudoun Supervisor Jim Burton (I-Blue Ridge). “I just wish that the General Assembly would get its act together. Funding for these projects are the responsibility of the state and they haven’t stepped up.” – Loudoun Times-Mirror

In case you missed it, Supervisor Burton is referring to the fact that the state will be providing just under $171 per year for “secondary” roads in Loudoun over the next six years. For reference, that’s about what a commuter pays to ride the Greenway for three weeks.  I put the word secondary in quotes above, because what is secondary to Richmond is not secondary to you and me.

“There are areas of the commonwealth where their primary roads are what we would consider secondary roads,” Connaughton said. “And no matter what we do we will never be able to keep up with the subdivisions. We don’t have the resources and we don’t have the crews. VDOT’s down to 7,000 folks.” – Leesburg Today

Of course, roads (secondary and otherwise) have been built through local initiatives in Loudoun for years. Indeed, the proffer system has been invaluable in our ability to get the essential arteries of our area built. It was only last year that Assembly Republicans tried to kill even that!. Had we lost the ability to negotiate proffers from developers, Loudoun would have become impossible to traverse as new developments came without needed roads.

This history didn’t stop Gov. McDonnell’s Secretary of Transportation from coming to Loudoun to lecture us on doing more, however.

Connaughton said the biggest thing to help transportation is going to be localities partnering with the state to create funding.

“One thing you’re going to see is trying more and more to get localities to take up the burden of road building,” Connaughton said. “We just don’t have the resources to continue to meet the need. – Leesburg Today

Apparently, Secretary Connaughton is ignorant of how we’ve been doing things here for the past twenty years. We already are building our own roads, far more than the state is! Furthermore, it is remarkably disingenuous to say that “we just don’t have the resources” when it is the Governor’s own party that refuses to provide the resources.

Chairman York pointed out an inconvenient reality at that same event.

Funding for transportation projects locally would be difficult, if not impossible to sustain for Loudoun, York added.

“As long as we have a need for school construction, there’s really no capacity to start adding bond referenda,” he said. – Leesburg Today

The Governor and his administration are asking the county to put its good credit on the line to fulfill a responsibility the commonwealth has abdicated, even though the commonwealth continues to expect the county to send the same level of taxes and resources to Richmond. Our Supervisors are doing the best they can to keep up with our transportation needs, but the county is facing hundreds of millions of dollars in deficits each year, and being forced to choose between traffic and schools because the Assembly is playing politics with both is unconscionable.

But hey, at least we sill get to buy our liquor at state-run ABC stores.

(With a tip-o-the-hat to Loudoun County Traffic for the articles that inspired this post.)

Here are the links we’ve been reading over the past couple of days.

And if I may make one editorial comment:

So let me get this straight, Goldman and Morgan were essentially taking bets from both sides of the housing boom, and making money on the difference based on the rates on each side that they themselves arranged?

Look, I’m not that smart, but I know a bookie when I see one. -P13

I need to give a tip-o-the-hat to my friend Jennifer who lives in Astoria for the first link below.  

• Locals and linguists argue that notorious Queens accent is fading away – This one hits pretty close to home for me, as my mom grew up in Queens and I have a large extended family from there. I’ll never forget walking into an office in the City one day and hearing a voice that I swore was my late great-aunt. It turns out the secretary there grew up in her neighborhood. There’s a Queens accent, believe me.
• SUNY New Paltz looks to the sky – One of our closest friends now runs her own telescope observatory. Here’s a classic quote: “That’s why the university brought in a person with a Ph.D. in astronomy. I’m expected, and have been trained, to build a telescope.” Go Amy!
• Conservative Admits: Tax Cuts Don’t Pay For Themselves. – As the author says, refreshing not so much for what it says, but because a conservative is saying it. Is there hope for Reality-Based World after all?
• A drug raid goes viral – War on Drugs FAIL. Apparently, it’s standard operating procedure in a mistaken drug raid for the police to shoot your dogs, and possibly other family members, then to lie about it. Radley Balko has been doing the heartbreaking but necessary work of exposing this.
• Color Survey Results – xkcd ran a color survey to see if there were gender differences in how people name colors. The results are both interesting and hilarious. Read the whole post down to the part with “color names most disproportionately popular among men.”
• Stuff White People Do: Blame Their Crimes on Phantom People of Color. A police officer in Philly shot himself in the shoulder and said a black guy shot him. Yeah.
  

The name Jeff Barnett has been in circulation a lot in Democratic circles of late, but it may be a name some Democratic voters may not know. For example, we know that Doorbellqueen knocks for him. And we know that Daverunner makes the case for him.

So who is Jeff Barnett? He is a veteran, a Democrat, a homeowner, a father and a fighter for you and me.

Jeff Barnett is our Democratic candidate for Congress in Virginia’s 10th district, running against 20-year incumbent, Frank Wolf.

A new vision for the 10th District

My name is Jeff Barnett, and I am running for Congress in Virginia’s 10th Congressional District.

Forty years ago I answered the call to serve when I took the oath for the United States Air Force. Today I am stepping up to serve again. I am running for Congress because our district needs someone who believes in stepping up to our problems, not passing the buck to the next generation of Virginia. We need to start solving our problems now. In our time. On our dime. We need to focus on producing economic growth while helping families keep their homes, sparking the next generation of job growth, creating the next generation of transportation, and achieving national security. – Jeff Barnett

That’s who Jeff Barnett is. Follow below the fold for my own reasons for supporting our next Congressman.  I first met Jeff at the LCDC Reorganization meeting in January. He spent many (boring!) hours on a Saturday watching the most procedural of events, just for the opportunity to see, meet, and talk with Loudoun’s democrats. He spent his time listening to our diverse voices, and hearing what we had to say.

I met Jeff again at an event hosted by the Lansdowne Democrats. On a grey afternoon, Jeff met with a score of Democrats in a neighbors house and talked with us about health care, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the burdens of debt carried by so many of our students.

But Jeff’s primary message truly struck home for me. He talked about the debt and despair brought on by the housing crisis. He talked about neighbors losing their homes, people unable to make their mortgage payments because of losing their jobs. He talked about how Loudoun county had suffered from the housing bubble more than most anywhere, and how its aftereffects reverberated from house to house and street to street.

And then Jeff talked about people like me.

He talked about homeowners who were underwater, but making their payments in good faith, even as the banks they were paying were reneging on their own promises, and refusing to renegotiate terms, even as they negotiated the best terms they could from our government.

Jeff understands that we need to fix our problems in our time and on our dime. That means doing it now, not leaving it to the next generation, that means talking about defense spending as something to be considered rationally. It means governing for you and me.

So that’s who Jeff Barnett is, and why he’s going to have my vote in November. I hope he’ll have yours.

[Update] If you want to get involved with the campaign, here’s how!

How can I get in contact with the campaign?

For general questions and information, you can email info@jeffbarnettforcongress.com, or call our office number at 703-657-2664 (NOTE: This number rings through directly to our Herndon HQ. It is a different office number than we had previously given, however both numbers will still work).

Where are your offices located?

Our Campaign HQ is located at 344 Elden Street, Herndon, VA 20170. It is in the Herndon Centre (KMart) right behind the McDonalds.

Our McLean office, located at 1322 Vincent Place, McLean, VA 22101, will be up and running by May 14.

Will you be opening other offices in the District?

Yes we will. Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for people to reach us and to volunteer for the campaign. The only other confirmed location is the Loudoun County Democratic Committee office in Leesburg, which at least one of our Field Organizers will be working out of.  I will email out as soon as locations are nailed down and offices are up and running.

I want to volunteer today, can I do so?

Most definitely! If you stop by our Herndon office (or our McLean office at the end of next week) we can get you a walk packet or set you up with call lists.

(Crossposted from Leesburg Tomorrow.)

The Loudoun County Democratic Committee will be sponsoring Relay for Life teams to walk in the Relay for Life at Heritage high school on June 12-13th. We already have one full team (15 people) and are now putting together a second!

Our Reason to Relay

Fighting cancer is a team effort. The impact we can make together is much greater than what any of us could do alone.

At the American Cancer Society Relay For Life, our team will camp out overnight and take turns walking around the track to raise money and awareness to help the American Cancer Society save more lives from cancer. By joining or donating to our team, you will be a part of a life-changing event that gives everyone in the community a chance to celebrate the lives of people who have battled cancer, remember loved ones lost, and fight back against a disease that takes too much.

Please make a donation, or join our team and help us create a world where cancer can no longer claim another year of anyone’s life.

Ellen Heald is organizing the teams, and the LCDC will have a tent at the Relay. We Democrats are committed to our community and are proud to be able to support this great organization.

I hope you’ll consider joining the team and walking that weekend. (There’s more below the fold!)Even if you cannot make the event, you can still support the Relay For Life by going out to dinner!

If you eat at American Flatbread (Map) on May 19th and say you’re there for the “Benefit Bake,” 15% of your bill will be donated to the Relay for Life. If you go out to dinner once or twice a month anyway, consider going to American Flatbread on the 19th this month and eat for a cause.

You should eat at American Flatbread anyway, for what that’s worth. Locally produced ingredients in fantastic pizza accompanied by good beer. What more could you want?

This week, the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the construction of a hospital on Route 50, Stone Spring Medical Center. This brings the long saga of HCA vs. Inova to, if not a conclusion, at least a resting point.

After almost a decade of debate, Loudoun supervisors on May 10 unanimously approved the county’s second full-service hospital.

StoneSpring Regional Medical Center-a 337,000-square-foot 164-bed hospital to be located at the intersection of U.S. 50 and Gum Spring Road near South Riding – is slated to open in 2015, according to officials with Hospital Corporation of America, the facility’s developer.

“Loudoun’s residents have long asked for another hospital and a choice in hospital care,” Tracey White, vice president of community and government relations, said in a statement. “It has taken eight long years to get the county’s approval of HCA’s project that will answer that call and we are pleased that residents are finally one step closer to getting the care and access they deserve. We look forward to serving the people of Loudoun County.” – Loudoun Times-Mirror

The funny thing about this outcome is that the past five years of community protests, shady astroturfing campaigns, lawsuits, recriminations and threats could have been completely avoided. The thousands of hours and millions of dollars spent by all the various entities involved in this fight could have been put towards more useful purposes, if HCA had simply referred to the county’s health care plan, and proposed a hospital for the Rt. 50 corridor originally.

There’s more below the fold…After four years, Loudoun got the hospital it wanted in the location it wanted. The County Comprehensive Plan guides development for the County, and all the debates and discussions that fill our news and discussion are generally spawned by developments that would violate that plan.

(County Comprehensive Plan – Land Use)

In light of this week’s decision, it is interesting to reflect on some of the comments and actions by the various parties over the past five years. For example, HCA swore they would not come to Loudoun if the Broadlands hospital was rejected.  

Before the vote, Margaret Lewis, head of HCA’s Capital Division, said the company had no immediate plans to build a full-service hospital on Rt. 50 because the area could not support such a facility. Tuesday, Foust reaffirmed that position, saying the vote against Broadlands did not change those plans.

“Rt. 50 is not an option for us to build a hospital,” he said, adding that the HCA-owned Glascock site is “clearly an inferior site” when compared with the Broadlands location or Inova’s property on Rt. 50. – Leesburg Today

It’s funny how that “not an option” became the best option, and was also the original option that the County planned.

We should always take comments from developers with a grain of salt, especially comments that are absolute in nature. When a developer says they “cannot” or “will not” do something unless they get their way, the saga of a second Loudoun Hospital proves the lie of that absolutist assertion. It is wise to follow the money. HCA coveted the wealthy Loudoun healthcare market, and was going to grab a piece of it in whatever way they could. Our Board of Supervisors did well to hold to the plan, and look with a jaundiced eye on the machinations of the hospital campaigns. They knew that HCA wanted Loudoun more than Loudoun wanted HCA, and in applying that knowledge, our County got what we wanted and needed.

It is okay when developers, and other monied interests, do not get their way when it comes to our land and our community. We, the voters of Loudoun, are the ones who get to choose who will do what where, through our elected officials and publicly developed plans in advisory commissions. In all cases it is the will of the voters that must supercede the wishes of developers.

Last night’s Kincora hearing brought out an interesting mix of community members, according to an article on the meeting in the Loudoun Independent.

A mostly supportive crowd showed up in Leesburg Monday night to praise a zoning request to build a massive community of shops, offices, hotels and homes that would surround a performing arts center and a baseball stadium at the top of Route 28 in Ashburn.

“I want my eventual kids to go there,” said enthusiastic Loudoun resident and local freelance sportswriter Jason Rufner. “Now is the right time, and this is the right project…I want it next door to me. Give it to me!” – Loudoun Independent

Quoted in the article are a few people who live in the area (and support baseball), a business executive who may want a headquarters there, and Supervisor Jim Burton.

Regarding supervisors, several expressed discomfort with the developer’s plan to levy a special assessment on future tenants as a means to help pay for future road improvements. Concerns arose over whether Kincora would ever have enough tenants to pay for its promised infrastructure fixes.

“I think it is extremely optimistic to think that the entire 2.5 million square feet of office space will build out,” said Supervisor Jim Burton (I-Blue Ridge). “And I think 1,400 homes is excessive.” – Loudoun Independent

It appears that the fundamental question presented by Kincora, and development like Kincora which requests a change in the County’s master plan, is to what degree a given piece of land should be developed. It is pretty clear that something is going to be built at the southwest corner of Rt. 7 and Rt. 28. It’s also clear that people want the baseball park that’s been proposed for that site. It seems also that some local businesses would like to expand into that area.

However, Supervisor Burton’s questions are well asked. How much should be built there? And how should it be paid for?Just because people want baseball in Loudoun, that doesn’t mean that citizens want another high-density mixed-use development.

If given final approval by supervisors, the Kincora project would allow the development of up to 2,722,200 square feet of office space, 398,825 square feet of commercial, 575,000 square feet of hotel space, equal to 720 rooms, 1,400 multi-family units and 277,000 square feet of civic uses. Included in the civic uses are a fire-rescue station and a performing arts center. Of the residential units, 300 are associated with a proposed minor league baseball stadium and 228 will be Affordable Dwelling Units and workforce housing. As part of a separate application, the Board of Supervisors already has granted approval to allow the construction of a 5,500-seat, 75,000-square-foot baseball stadium, 901,211 square feet of office in eight buildings and 74,000 square feet of auxiliary uses including restaurants, banks and other services for employees and visitors. – Leesburg Today

In fact, the election of 2007 appeared to indicate that people want less development in Loudoun, and keeping with the master plan is probably the most prudent course. The degree of additional density proposed for Kincora may be more than the public realizes.

This is the very point that Supervisor McGimsey has made when asking about this proposal. Sure, let’s have baseball and some high-class office space, but do we also need houses, condos and tons of business space that will be added as well? Or are we better off sticking to the master plan and allowing the massive inventories of houses and office space already. It is even possible that building a mixed-use development at this location will weaken the marketability of the office space there.

[Loudoun County Planning] Commission member Peggy Maio (Blue Ridge), who along with Gigi Robinson (Leesburg) voted against the recommendation, said the mix of residential housing among business for the development is too high.

“This will send a mixed message to the office market that Kincora is not the landmark office employment park that they are promoting,” Maio said.

In addition, she said the percentages of office, residential and retail space proposed for Kincora Village are too high for the mixed-use zoning business district it’s planned for. – Loudoun Times-Mirror

Adding to these concerns is the developer’s means for funding Kincora. The funding means proposed for this work, a future assessment on “eventual tenants,” is unreliable. Just like Mr. Rufner’s “eventual children” in attendance at the proposed baseball field, it is unwise to base concrete planning on highly subjective eventualities. Especially when the developer’s proposed funding mechanism, the assessment on tenants, has the effect of reducing the attractiveness of the office space to those tenants. Remember that we already have a plethora of unoccupied office space in the region.

To be clear, I do not think that Kincora is necessarily a bad idea for that location. I just think that there remain a number of questions that are worth answering. I believe that our Supervisors do well to examine these kinds of applications – applications which require a modification of the county’s master plan – in detail and with a careful eye.

We need those answers more than we need baseball.

If we get good answers, then I say, play ball!