With both an engineering and medical background, my views are science and validated-results based.  They are more oriented with F. A. Hayek and “The Fatal Conceit,” than with American Planning Association dogma.

None of my comments are intended to disparage the conscientious efforts of those who have been fulfilling their duties in conducting the various studies being presented to you tonight.  My focus is on the factual results rather than on motives or good intentions.  Such a focus might give a false impression of my not being considerate or caring, just the opposite is the truth.

According to the official “oneCommunities” website, the “Livability Project” (your agenda item #1), is funded by a U.S. HUD $999,000 grant.  The October 14, 2010 letter from HUD to Mr. Stephen Williams in announcing the grant award made reference to the title of his application, “Sustainable Communities Regional Grant Planning Program.” Subsequently, an unexplained metamorphosis took place which transformed the project title into a “livability” project, and the term “sustainability” was scarcely to be found thereafter.  What is the definition of “livability” for this project?  If it exits, I cannot find it.

From that same website, I have copied one item from the 1998 Sustainability Accords (implementation of which is an objective of the grant):

3. To maintain a population composition that does not reduce the sustainability of the Region.
To be measured by the distribution of population according to age, race/ethnicity, income/personal wealth, education, and employment status.

In looking around the room at the people making up these commissions, I see at least one visible measurement feature not yet achieved from this 1998 guiding goal.

Mr. Williams in his opening remarks tonight claimed that the City, County, and University are considered as one entity by the public.  The public does not seem to agree, as documented by his own TJPDC livability group survey on jobs and housing preferences.  As reported in the February 15, 2012 Charlottesville-Tomorrow: “most of the 508 respondents said that they would prefer to live in the rural areas of Albemarle County if there were no barriers in choice of housing. Sixty-one percent said they commuted from outside the Charlottesville Albemarle area because they found housing elsewhere more affordable or a better value.”

The article continues: “…commuters continue to have a preference for larger houses on large lots in nearby counties…if expense were not a barrier, many of these commuters would prefer to live in Albemarle’s rural areas.”

This same  article noted that Mr. Wayne Cilimberg found that “it is too easy to live in the rural area and drive to work.” Albemarle County staff found this a “thorn in our flesh.”

From the citizen taxpayer’s point of view, it appears that “livability” is whatever the planners want it to be, even if it means forcing the round pegs of private citizen choice  into the square-hole  utopian notions of planners.  Instead of working to accommodate the expressed wishes of the public, the planners complain that the public does not know what is best for them.

The historical record of planning gives little reason to be optimistic about any attempts to define, measure, and regulate this undefined “livability.” Your own comments here tonight illustrate that fact. There were calls to have more committee meetings to get your stories straight before the next joint planning meeting.  The livability surveys are inherently flawed because any survey is limited to the chosen indicators.  What is the correct number of indicators?  Are all indicators of equal value? Who decides? Why feature questions on bike paths and not questions related to better or more paved roads? How do you quantify the worth of an indicator? What indicators are unknown, yet vital?

Would a different group pick and weigh different indicators? Whose biases get to shape the wording of the questions?  Who does not know that the phrasing of a question largely determines the answer? Who decides how large a sample group must be? Who decides the composition of that sample?

In the end, the result is largely pre-determined by the original crafters of the survey process, and the choices they offered the public.

You commissioners were quick to notice and question the issue of survey sample size and composition.  For all the effort to engage the public to vote their opinions on the packaged survey questions, the livability team could point to only 350 or so individuals, scattered over the several survey topics, who had signed in to partake in the surveys.  They had failed to cross reference the names and could not answer your question: “Are these the same people voting each time or not?  Is it the same core group of activists voting each time?   At some of the public voting displays only 20 or 30 people showed up. The County/City population is around 120,000.  This cannot be considered a valid representation of public opinion.  The HUD grant demands that the livability project go through this public participation process, but to say that at the end that “the public wants this or that” based on the results so far is not valid or meaningful.

None of the Livability surveys included linking “cost” to the desirability of a measure.  If the survey had included: “How much more in taxes would you pay for measure “x,” then the results might be meaningful.   So long as the wish list is “free” why not have more of everything deemed desirable. You will get a diversity of choices limited only by the number of people responding.  Livability for some might include a free flat panel TV, why not?

None of the Livability surveys included “private property rights” as a limiting factor or “indicator” in the choices offered. An expert on governmental planning, Randal O’Toole, has noted that “planners believe that private property rights are flexible and can be changed at whim.” He quotes from the APA book “The Land We Share,” that private property is an “institution that communities reshape over time to promote evolving goals,” and comments that “if guided by planners, the government decides that your property has historic, environmental, or scenic value, they can take from you the right to use your land without any composition.” Do you agree with this?

On the topic of transportation, Mr. O’Toole notes that “more than four out of five Americans say they prefer a house in the suburbs to higher-density housing near jobs, shops, and transit. (This true here as noted already in the TJPDC Livability study.) But planners believe a greater share of Americans should live in high-density housing, partly because planners erroneously think people living in higher densities will drive less.”  He notes that “Germany can’t tear them (high-density housing) down fast enough to keep up with people leaving for single-family homes.”

The presentations this evening spent much time on affordable housing.  What is the definition of “affordable housing”?  What determined the arbitrary percent level goal for 2050? How much is the right amount and for whom? I heard no mention of making housing affordable. In City/County discussions of new jobs, such jobs are always carefully qualified as being “environmentally friendly, high-tech, high-paying, clean.”  This proviso filters out the real jobs that the real unemployed might be qualified to do in more basic manufacturing.  The large numbers of unemployed for whom housing is unaffordable do not have the educational skills for such utopian industries.  This cherry picking of acceptable industry/jobs puts the disadvantaged in a perpetual dependency role rather than into a job.

One example of advocacy guiding public policy was illustrated by the comments regarding accommodations by the City to bicycling groups.  The spokesperson for the City noted the need for basic infrastructure upgrades.  How odd then that C-T reports that “The city’s budget director, Leslie Beauregard, said $100,000 of the capital budget was moved from undergrounding utilities into bicycle infrastructure development.”

Much “livability” talk also concerns the achieving of the right mix of housing stock and individuals.  The April 17, 2012 article by Thomas Sowell discussed this very topic.  He notes, “…in order to mix and match classes and races to fit the government’s preconceptions…is the idea that there is something wrong if a community does not have an even or random distribution of various kinds of people. This arbitrary assumption is that the absence of evenness or randomness — whether in employment, housing or many other situations — shows a “problem” that has to be “corrected.”

No evidence is considered necessary for this assumption to prevail at any level of government, including the US Supreme Court. No one has to show the existence, much less the prevalence, of an even or random distribution of different segments of the population — in any country, anywhere. Nothing is more common than for people to sort themselves out when it comes to residential housing, whether by class, race or other factors.”

In reference to politicians and bureaucrats, Sowell concludes with, “People convinced of their own superior wisdom and virtue have no time to spare for what other people really want.”

The article by Wendell Cox in the WSJ April 9, 2012 “California Declares War on Suburbia” confirms the experiences in other states regarding planning edicts.  He notes that “The campaign against suburbia is the result of laws passed in 2006 (the Global Warming Solutions Act) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and in 2008 (the Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act) on urban planning. The latter law, as the Los Angeles Times aptly characterized it, was intended to “control suburban sprawl, build homes closer to downtown and reduce commuter driving, thus decreasing climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions.” In short, to discourage automobile use.”

Further, “Dartmouth economist William Fischel found that California’s housing had been nearly as affordable as the rest of the nation until the more restrictive regulations, such as development moratoria, urban growth boundaries, and overly expensive impact fees came into effect starting in the 1970s. Other economic studies, such as by Stephen Malpezzi at the University of Wisconsin, also have documented the strong relationship between more intense land-use regulations and exorbitant house prices.”

There was discussion during the meeting concerning housing prices and their statistical distribution in the City/County and land use/density.  Are you  bemoaning County regulations requiring 21 acre minimums for land divisions, with the restriction of only one home on one acre of that 21 acres? Do you not realize that the more restrictive land use laws become, the more expensive the land and homes become?  The number of people who chose to move and live outside the City or County because of increased housing costs is testimony to this.  Such planning choices make City and County living appear to be more of an elitist achievement.

At the recent London conference “Planet Under Pressure,” Yale University professor Karen Seto was quoted in MSMBC, “We certainly don’t want them (humans) strolling about the entire countryside.  We want them to save land for nature by living closely (together).”

Commissioners, it appears that there is a schism between the elite notions of the university planners and the wants and actions of the public. You  have the unenviable job of reconciling your good intentions with history and human diversity.

Corbusier tried in the 1930s with his “Radiant Cities” project; Jane Jacobs did a bit better; Chicago tried with the best planning talent in the 1950s and 1960s only to have these edifices later demolished.

In conclusion, I return to F. A. Hayek’s “Fatal Conceit.”  Ralph Reiland’s 2009 definition of that term conveys the message,  “that one man or one group, one cabinet of commanding officials or one central committee, or one team of planners from Harvard and Yale, can gather and understand enough information in order to reshape the world around them according to their wishes, reshape human nature…”

(Note: These remarks were delivered to a joint session of the Albemarle County and Charlottesville City Planning Commissions on April 18, 2012.)

Norris, a pro-abortion Democrat, joined about 25 protesters at an April 12 rally on University Grounds to call for an end to feline intubation. This procedure allows medical residents to practice putting tubes down cats’ throats in anticipation of later using the technique to save lives of human babies.

According to a report in the April 13, 2012 Daily Progress, “Norris the Red” called the feline testing process “cruel and unnecessary.”

The Progress story clarifies that no cats have died as a result of the process. Dr. Sandy Feldman, attending veterinarian to subject cats compared the procedure’s aftermath to a “sore throat.”

Sadly, Norris’s concern for “cruel and unnecessary” procedures performed on cats does not extend to human babies, thousands of whom have been (and continue to be) aborted at the University of Virginia Medical Center—just steps away from the UVa “save the cats” rally.

Whether pleading for the comfort of cats or declaring the rights of trees, godless Charlottesville leftists, inspired by morally confused “leaders” like Dave Norris and David Toscano, continue to miss the forest for the trees. And while Charlottesville cats may now be more comfortable in life, Charlottesville babies continue to suffer unspeakable, torturous deaths (warning extremely graphic photo) in the name of “choice.”

Charlottesville Democrats in 2004 attempted to oust golf from the park through a series of meetings, plans, and maneuverings led by then-mayor Maurice Cox, as head of the McIntire Park Master Plan Committee. Although Cox’s design scheme—which included opulent cafés, majestic gardens and expensive water features—was not approved, his concept of commandeering control of the park for professional and political profit lives on in the hearts and minds of the Charlottesville Democrat establishment.

The politics of today’s plan has its genesis in early discussions between McIntire Botanical Garden President, Helen Flamini, and former Charlottesville Mayor (and current City Councilor), Dave Norris, from which Norris emerged to publicly support Flamini’s concept of a golf-less botanical empire in McIntire.

Flamini’s political quid pro quo for Norris’ backing of her $50 million “green dream” at Mcintire, was her direct public support for the mayor’s reelection efforts in a contested Democrat primary. In an April 29, 2009 letter to the Daily Progress, Flamini gushed over Norris’s “exemplary leadership” and his progressive accomplishments. She also shamelessly noted his support for her botanical garden concept:

Working with Charlottesville Parks and Recreation, he has improved city parks, and he has supported the concept and vision to create a botanical garden at McIntire Park, which will enhance residents’ enjoyment and appreciation of nature, promote environmental educational programs, support economic development, increase tourism and guarantee that future generations have an outstanding park system for all to enjoy.

Dedicated leaders like Dave Norris deserve continued support.

While then-Mayor Norris continued to praise the Botanical Garden at every suitable opportunity, Flamini persisted in her conspicuous ennoblement of the mayor. In an October 25, 2009 letter to the Daily Progress, Flamini implored the Charlottesville electorate to return Norris to office:

City Council elections will be here on Nov. 3. There are many issues confronting the citizens of Charlottesville in the days ahead, and it will take dedicated and informed leaders to meet those challenges.

With so many important issues facing the City Council candidates, this would be the wrong time to elect a candidate whose entire focus is on a single polarizing matter.  What is needed is a candidate who is focused on all the important issues affecting the city: affordable housing, transportation, education, recreation, environmental sustainability, revitalization of public housing, fiscal responsibility and McIntire Park.

Dave Norris has worked toward addressing those issues as well as continuing to promote and support the goals from City Council’s Vision Statement-2025 that will continue to make Charlottesville a great place to live for all its citizens.

Innovative, thoughtful ideas to improve community representation are but one example of the leadership role exemplified by Dave Norris. City voters should re-elect Dave Norris and elect Kristin Szakos to City Council, as they work to ensure continued progress in making Charlottesville the great city it already is.

Herself, a resident of Albemarle County (and not of Charlottesville City), Helen Flamini’s audacious public support for Dave Norris must have been perplexing to the casual onlooker—unless viewed through botanical lenses. Two public endorsements of Norris’s candidacy, which she could not personally advance by ballot, were well rewarded by Norris’s continuing advocacy of Flamini’s “pet” garden project.

But, as the Central Party Democrats’ political steamrolling of McIntire Golf did not begin with Dave Norris, nor does it end with him.

Several high-profile Charlottesville Democrats hold high-profile positions with the McIntire Botanical Garden organization:

• Peter MacIntosh, 2011 Democrat candidate for Charlottesville City Council, is Vice President
• Paul Beyer, 2011 Democrat candidate for Charlottesville City Council, is a Board Member
• Linda Seaman, 2012 co-chair of the Charlottesville Democrat Party, and former Democrat candidate for Charlottesville City Council, is a board member
• Karen Firehock, a former Democrat appointee to the Charlottesville Planning Commission, is on the Advisory Committee

Not content with behind-scenes kneecapping of McIntire golf through strategic political partnerships and placements, Charlottesville Democrat operatives now have begun an overt takeover of the McIntire Park “public” planning process. To wit, Democrat City Councilor Kathy Galvin, a Seaman protégé, commandeered the Monday, January 23 McIntire master planning meeting, imprudently and unexpectedly championing a new concept which would completely exclude golf from McIntire Park, as described in coverage by Charlottesville Tomorrow:

“In the three concepts that you have presented to us, you have a very logical, rational illustration of how you cannot make these two big programs [golf and botanical garden] co-exist,” Galvin said. “What you’ve demonstrated is how the golf course can work, and what happens is you have demonstrated that the botanical garden and some of the other uses really don’t work.”  Galvin encouraged another design effort showing what a park dominated by the botanical garden would look like. [emphasis added]

The plans advertised for consideration up to the point of Galvin’s indecorous self-interjection all had included some golf component in the future use of McIntire Park—and all had been discussed in great detail previously at the meeting.

Galvin’s brazen advancement of an unsolicited plan so late into the process—on behalf of the Charlottesville Democrat establishment—rightfully was decried as inappropriate by fair-minded meeting attendees. Yet, subsequent conversations on McIntire’s future have incorporated Galvin’s golf-less vision—which now appears to be the favored future for McIntire Park among Charlottesville’s all-Democrat City Council.

A feeble administrative attempt by city staff to blunt Galvin’s procedural incursion—through the belated introduction of a “golf-only” plan—does nothing to level the course or to even the score. Sadly, once again, naïve participants of Charlottesville’s self-vaunted public planning process not only have wasted time playing in a rigged game, but they have been clubbed by an unscrupulous opponent: the Charlottesville Democrat Machine.

(Photograph of McIntire flip-board courtesy of Charlottesville Tomorrow.)

Frederick, apparently not satisfied with TJPDC’s million-dollar, taxpayer-funded assault on private property rights (under the guise of regional “planning”), now is dispensing advice on how to squelch the speech of climate change “deniers.”

In a February 4 New York Times article about Tea Party activism and United Nations’ Agenda 21, “counterorganizer” Frederick openly presents her contra-constitutional game plan envisioned to mute citizen “critics” of the globalist green agenda:

Summer Frederick, the project manager for the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission in Charlottesville, Va., which withdrew its dues to Iclei and its support from a national mayors’ agreement on climate change late last year after a campaign by protesters, now conducts seminars on how to deal with Agenda 21 critics. (Among her tips: remove the podium and microphones, which can make it “very easy for a critic to hijack a meeting.”) [emphasis added]

While such a diabolical scheme could be effective if implemented covertly, Frederick’s hubris in brazenly discussing methods of disabling community dialogue at public meetings displays either abject arrogance or abject stupidity—or perhaps both.

As stated on its web site, the TJPDC has a noble purpose:

The mission of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission is to serve our local governments by providing regional vision, collaborative leadership and professional service to develop effective solutions.

Yet the TJPDC’s promised mission of “service” is perverted beyond reclamation when a $52,000 per year government employee (Summer Frederick), supervised by a $110,000 per year government employee (Stephen Williams), flagrantly works to promote an anti-American personal agenda while proposing the undermining of foundational American rights—all in the name of “planning.”

Mr. Williams, maybe it’s time to remove Ms. Frederick’s microphone, podium, and employment contract.

It appears that the United States Department of Justice (DoJ), Criminal Division, is working with United Kingdom police to pursue the leaker of the 2009 and 2011 “Climategate” emails.

I have learned that last week DoJ sent a search-and-seizure letter to the host of three “skeptic” blogs. Last night, UK police raided a blogger’s home and removed computers and equipment.

The leaked records derailed domestic “cap-and-trade” legislation in the U.S. and, internationally, talks for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. The emails and computer code were produced with taxpayer funds and held on taxpayer-owned computers both in the US and the UK, and all were subject to the UK Freedom of Information Act, the US FOIA, and state FOI laws.

They also were being unlawfully withheld in both the UK (by the University of East Anglia) and the US (Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, including stonewalling me for two years, and three others for longer).

The hunt involving US and UK law enforcement is now escalating.

Wednesday night, UK time, six detectives with the UK police (Norfolk Police Department) raided the home of at least one blogger, removing his equipment to look for clues to the identity of leaker “FOIA 2011”.

On December 9, DoJ sent a preservation letter under 18 U.S.C 2703(f) to the publication platform (website host) WordPress. This authority authorizes the government to request an ISP to preserve all of the records of a specific account for 90 days while the feds work on a warrant.

Norfolk PD affirmed to the subject of at least one of their raids that this international law enforcement hunt is for the leaker, meaning not for those whose acts the leaker exposed, releasing admissions in their own words.

In the U.S., the academic and other political Left have had fits about the Virginia Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli, exercising even more specific, anti-fraud authority to seek further records from University of Virginia, following up on indications from the first Climategate release of possible fraud against the taxpayer.

Apparently, that represented an abuse of the police power. No word yet if they are outraged by DoJ’s current foray or the UK raiding team.

The DoJ attorney sending the preservation letters, as it hapens in this small world, a graduate of the University of Virginia (UVa). UVa is also the subject of litigation a group I am associated with, the American Tradition Institute (ATI), has filed on behalf of Virginia taxpayers seeking Climategate-related emails it holds.

This is a case which, I have it on reliable authority, has the Virginia faculty and establishment beside themselves and demanding an all-out effort to oppose production wear us down (and also Attorney General Cuccinelli).

So far UVa has spent upwards of a million dollars in privately donated money just to fight the AG’s request. They continue to fight us in court every step of the way. Clearly, this is no small matter in the quarters insisting that this taxpayer-financed information ever see the light of day.

Even the criminal legal apparatus of the US and UK must be invoked against this threat, apparently.

So, to review, the UK police and the US Department of Justice, Criminal Division, are pursuing a leaker of public records subject to one ore more freedom of information laws, unlawfully withheld under those laws, which leaks indicate, e.g., apparent civil violations (tortious interference by seeking dismissial of certain “skeptics”), and raising reasonable questions of fraud against taxpayers.

And they are pursuing the leaker.

The content of what your Department of Justice has sent follows:

Pursuant to Title 18, United States Code, Section 2703(f), this letter is a formal request for the preservation of all stored communications, records, and other evidence in your possession regarding the following domain name(s) pending further legal process: [DELETED] (“the Accounts”) from 00:01 GMT Monday 21 November 2011 to 23:59 GMT Wednesday 23 November 2011.

I request that you not disclose the existence of this request to the subscriber or any other person, other than as necessary to comply with this request. If compliance with this request might result in a permanent or temporary termination of service to the Accounts, or otherwise alert any user of the Accounts as to your actions to preserve the information described below, please contact me as soon as possible and before taking action.

I request that you preserve, for a period of 90 days, the information described below currently in your possession in a form that includes the complete record. This request applies only retrospectively. It does not in any way obligate you to capture and preserve new information that arises after the date of this request. This request applies to the following items, whether in electronic or other form, including information stored on backup media, if available:

1. The contents of any communication or file stored by or for the Accounts and any associated accounts, and any information associated with those communications or files, such as the source and destination email addresses or IP addresses.
2. All records and other information relating to the Accounts and any associated accounts including the following:

a. Names (including subscriber names, user names, and screen names);

b. Addresses (including mailing addresses, residential addresses, business addresses, and e-mail addresses);

c. Local and long distance telephone connection records;

d. Records of session times and durations, and the temporarily assigned network addresses (such as Internet Protocol (“IP”) addresses) associated with those sessions, including any log history of when username “FOIA” uploaded posts to the Accounts;

e. Length of service (including start date) and types of service utilized;

f. Telephone or instrument numbers (including MAC addresses);

g. Other subscriber numbers or identities (including the registration Internet Protocol (“IP”) addresses); and

h. Means and source of payment for such service (including any credit card or bank account number) and billing records.

If you have questions regarding this request, please call me at 202-XXX-XXXX.

Sincerely,

XXXXXX

Trial Attorney

 

Christopher C. Horner serves as a Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute

An October 17 Daily Progress story trumpets the lawless group’s intentions for the park, if they are granted special permission to camp there:

Occupy Charlottesville protesters asked the City Council on Monday to suspend the 11 p.m. curfew in Lee Park, which they are occupying.

Speakers from the group said that they feel the group is within the spirit, if not the letter, of the law, in that they want to keep the park safe, clean and healthy. [emphasis added]

A November 19 OC Facebook posts again states the group’s objective to maintain the park:

We will be having group park clean-up over the next few days to get the park neat and shiny: Tonight at 6pm, Sunday 10am, and Monday 10am. Feel welcome to stop by and pitch in whenever you can though. The to-do list includes: Trash/recycling/compost disposal, Common tent re-organization, Leaf raking, Sign posting, General pick up, additional seating. Any more needs we can be sure to cover? [emphasis added]

The Special Events Permit issued to Occupy Charlottesville clearly delineates the group’s practical and financial responsibilities upon their departure:

• Any damage to park shrubbery, flower beds and or trees resulting from your organization’s special event will require reimbursement for any repairs or replacement
• Participants will be responsible for cleaning up the park area after the event.

Charlottesville City Public Works crews were on hand at Lee Park shortly after 7:00 this morning, attempting to deterg the site prior to public observation of the Occupiers’ reproach—an aftermath of filthy refuse.

While the fraction is the same, the numbers have been flipped. When it comes to bearing the financial burden for restoring Lee Park to usable condition, 1% made the mess, but 99% will pay to clean it up.

View the Lee Park “trashed” pictures that Charlottesville City doesn’t want you to see:

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

Concurrently, Albemarle County Supervisor Dennis Rooker has scoffed at suggestions that United Nations ideology—promoted by homegrown internationalists and foreign agents—is infiltrating local government with a goal of undermining foundational American principles.

Despite being presented with incontrovertible evidence of such, Rooker has kept his head firmly planted beneath the comfortable sands of self-imposed ignorance. But facts affirm the accusation, and now, additional evidence is surfacing that dangerous infiltration is ongoing locally.

Over the objections of Rooker and Board of Supervisors’ chair, Ann Mallek, the International Council on Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) recently was ejected from Albemarle County. Rooker pleaded for the County to retain ICLEI membership, touting numerous benefits without strings attached:

“It’s not a part of the United Nations. It’s not supported by the U.N. and it’s not governed by the U.N.,” Rooker said. “We have a tool that staff says is helpful, is inexpensive and that cannot be replaced by anything else that’s out there.”

Provably, Rooker was dead wrong about the lack of relationship between the two entities. Perhaps he might have been swayed on the ICLEI/Sustainability threat had he known that Jie Wu (aka Megan Wu)—the former ICLEI representative to Albemarle County—was (or is) a government official of the People’s Republic of (Communist) China. Her online biography lists her service to the PRC in their Ministry of Environmental Protection, and Wu was trained as a linguist at a university subordinate to the PRC’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. There is no evidence that Wu has renounced her Communist Chinese citizenship or forsworn her allegiance to the PRC, and yet, through Albemarle County’s ICLEI membership, Wu received carte blanch access to sensitive, local government operational information and data.

Wu and ICLEI may be gone (for now), but Koren Manning remains. Hired by TJPDC Executive Director, Stephen Williams, Manning is a paid employee of the organization, responsible for Livability Partnership website maintenance, social media outreach, and data analysis among other duties.

Manning holds or has held membership in a secretive, subversive group known as Planners Network: The Organization of Progressive Planning. In their mission statement, Planners Network (PN) advocates undermining America’s present political and economic underpinnings:

Planners Network is an association of professionals, activists, academics, and students involved in physical, social, economic, and environmental planning in urban and rural areas, who promote fundamental change in our political and economic systems.

The Network’s stated goals and objectives read like a page from Marx’s Communist Manifesto (or Charlottesville/Albemarle’s 1998 Sustainability Accords):

We believe that planning should be a tool for allocating resources and developing the environment to eliminate the great inequalities of wealth and power in our society, rather than to maintain and justify the status quo. We are committed to opposing racial, economic, and environmental injustice and discrimination by gender and sexual orientation. We believe that planning should be used to assure adequate food, clothing, housing, medical care, jobs, safe working conditions, and a healthful environment. We advocate public responsibility for meeting these needs, because the private market has proven incapable of doing so.

We seek to be an effective political and social force, working with other progressive organizations to inform public opinion and public policy and to provide assistance to those seeking to understand, control, and change the forces which affect their lives. [emphasis added]

But their utopian, socialist aspiration does not end there. The current PN mission statement has been sanitized from the original. The version found in Network newsletters from the 1980s and 1990s includes the following additional self-descriptive language:

We oppose the economic structure of our society, which values profit and property rights over human rights and needs. This system perpetuates the inequalities of class, race, sex and age which distort human relationships and limit the potential for a decent quality of life. We advocate a shift in current national budgetary priorities to favor human services, social production and environmental protection over military and other nonproductive expenditures. [emphasis added]

A Communist Chinese national and a neo-Marxist planning-activist inside Albemarle County Government—each bought and paid for with taxpayer dollars—should raise red flags to even casual observers. But instead, there is deafening silence.

Albemarle County Government, through ICLEI membership and affiliation with the TJPCD has entrusted confidential and sensitive information to a representative of a government hostile to United States’ interests and to a member of a group that seeks to remake America into a socialist gulag. And, Koren Manning and Jie Wu may be just the tip of a melting iceberg.

If Marxists and Communists infiltrate local government establishment and Dennis Rooker doesn’t acknowledge their presence, do the infill-traitors still pose a threat?

Almost worse than the concept of vote-purchasing with “free” government food, is that the monies expended for this boondoggle are siphoned from the city’s Capital Improvements Program, which is described as follows:

The Capital Improvement Program Fund (CIP) provides funding for streets, public buildings, land and other capital assets, which generally have a useful life of 5 years or more and cost more than $50,000. City Council, in their Adopted Budget Guidelines, has set a policy to allocate an amount no less than 3% of the General Fund budget for capital improvements.

The bizarre proposal for misappropriation of public “capital” tax dollars to sponsor neighborhood “celebrations” was brought forward last fall by Neighborhood Development Services Director, Jim Tolbert. In a pitch to City Council, Tolbert described his vision for the program:

Also, included would be funding for neighborhood based events and celebrations and for capacity building initiatives to help increase participation in neighborhoods or to get information out to help citizens become more involved in our government. We would anticipate that most grant requests would be between $250 and $5,000. [emphasis added]

Sensing opportunity to buy—with taxpayer dollars—additional votes for Democrats in upcoming elections as well as to increase general affection towards government, Tolbert’s scheme unanimously was approved by council through the body’s consent agenda.

The bureaucracy involved in gaining grant approval is mindboggling, requiring a convoluted seven-page process explanation and untold staff hours in submission review, evaluation, and scoring.

In keeping with the city’s Marxist sustainability agenda, brownie points are awarded to applications that promote delineated “Sustainability Values”:

• Project contributes to environmental health or our ability to effectively address climate change.
• Project will have a positive effect on the local economy and minimizes costs to the community, now and over the long term.
• Project supports responsible stewardship of public resources.
• Project contributes to social equity by meeting basic needs, benefiting vulnerable populations, promoting community safety and cultural awareness, or building community relationships and neighborhood cohesion.

Flummery aside, in spite of the stringent application process, profligacy is rampant in the solicitation and awarding of Neighborhood Grant funds. An evaluation of the Greenbrier Neighborhood Association’s (GNA) application to fund an October 9 Neighborhood Social, shows five tubs of ice cream (12.5 gallons) to be purchased at a cost of $300.00, or $24.00 per gallon. Several local grocery stores offer ice cream at less than $5.00 per gallon, a savings of nearly 80% over the city-paid price. And in the spirit of benevolence, Charlottesville City Government agreed to pick up the cost of a “bounce house” in order to enliven the soiree, even though the neighborhood’s application listed that expense as being covered by their association as a grant “match.” All told, this neighborhood’s “free” ice cream social set back Charlottesville taxpayers a cold $716—that’s $237 more than was requested by GNA. Predictably, the grant was approved (and possibly aggrandized) by Tolbert’s Neighborhood Development Services Department.

All of this is taking place concurrent with a Charlottesville School Board discussion on permanently banning ice cream from division grounds in order to combat a childhood “obesity epidemic.” So, while on the one hand, the State (city government) plies youth (and adults) with free ice cream at a neighborhood soiree (ironically held at Greenbrier Elementary), on the other hand, the State (city schools)—under funding governance and supposed oversight of Charlottesville City Hall— is classifying the frozen concoction as a dangerous substance not to be served on school property.

In a city with widespread crumbling infrastructure and millions in unmet capital needs—both exacerbated by years of executive mismanagement—it makes little sense to hand out capital improvement funds as if they were…ice cream. That is, of course, unless the city is Charlottesville, the mayor is Norrishood, and the governing body is totally devoid of common sense.

Recently:

• Vice President Joe Biden reportedly referred to Congressional tea party negotiators as “terrorists.”
• U.S. Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) said the tea party “can go straight to hell.”
• U.S. Representative Andre Carson (D-IN) said some congressional tea party members “would love to see you and me…hanging on a tree.”
• Charlottesville Mayor Dave “Norrishood” Norris characterized the tea party movement as solely interested in promoting personal wealth.
• Albemarle County Supervisor Dennis Rooker demeaned the tea party by accusing them of “infiltrating” local government and celebrating another “notch on the gun” in the tea party’s fight against institutionalized globalism.

And now Delegate David Toscano (D-57 VA) has entered the fray, advising circumstantial interdiction for contrarian tea party speech. The elitist Democrat—certain that climate change science is settled—accused Jefferson Area Tea Party members of “distortions of the truth” in recent statements they offered on the topics of global warming and sustainability.

But, unlike his fellow traducers, Toscano stepped beyond ignominy. Emboldened by a demographically statist district, Delegate Dave contrived a sinister proposition: a government-enforced suspension of First Amendment rights for tea party climate change “deniers.”

From a June 20 “General Assembly Update” on Toscano’s web site:

…Similar claims about the United Nations, property rights, and climate science were made during the Albemarle public hearing on the planning grant. In the view of those who argued against accepting the grant, the threat of climate change, as a human-made and highly threatening phenomenon, is at best an exaggeration and, at worst, an utter hoax. Fortunately, the County Board rejected the climate change deniers and reaffirmed its support for efforts to jointly plan with the City and University, though they voted to withdraw from ICLEI.

Allowing these claims into these local policy debates is counterproductive. There is broad scientific consensus, both in this country and around the world, that climate change is real and is enhanced by human activities. [emphasis added]

And who could disallow such “objectionable” speech? Conceivably, Toscano is asking Albemarle County Board of Supervisors Chair, Ann Mallek, to silence people with whom the Delegate disagrees—a thinly veiled request for prohibition of tea party members’ free expression at public meetings of local governing bodies.

An ardent, political opponent of Fifth Amendment private property rights, Democrat Toscano surreptitiously has found a new Amendment to abridge. But unlike eminent domain abuse, which presumably targets left and right alike, Toscano’s new bullseye is placed squarely on the backs of constitutional patriots with an overtly pro-liberty (and anti-internationalist) political agenda—one which threatens Toscano’s career-long efforts to empower and enlarge government at the expense of individual liberty.

Local media—complicit in advancing Toscano’s brand of statism—predictably has remained silent on this outrageous call to abrogate First Amendment rights of so-called “skeptics” and “conspiracy theorists.”

While Toscano despises conservatives’ use of terms like Marxist and socialist in describing America’s political left, in word and in deed, he is advocating for a ruling class that operates free from inconvenient constraints of the Bill of Rights to the United States Constitution. Government subjugation of private property rights and government-imposed speech-limits are derived straight from the totalitarian playbook as embraced by contemporary Marxists and socialists worldwide. Denials of such are without merit. If the muzzle fits, Delegate Toscano, wear it.

At the Wednesday, September 7 Albemarle County Board of Supervisors meeting, a board majority (Ken Boyd, Rodney Thomas, Duane Snow, Lindsay Dorrier) voted to drop the county’s participation in the Cool Counties initiative, with Dennis Rooker and board chair, Ann Mallek, voting to continue the unholy alliance. A visibly rattled Rooker took the outcome as an opportunity to again disparage the local tea party—and the tea party movement in general—as he lashed out against the verdict:

“But, you know, I mean, where we’re going now, is, in my view, is in a direction where we’re afraid to be perceived as environmentally committed because, you know, I guess, the tea party has told us that’s it’s a bad thing and they can put another notch on their gun and send out an e-mail to all of their people saying we got Albemarle County out of ICLEI, and we got Albemarle County out of Cool Counties.

There will be an e-mail that goes out nationally today or tomorrow on that issue because it’s a notch on the gun. And that’s what this is about. A notch on the gun.”

And what is the source and meaning of Rooker’s violent “gun” rhetoric? From Answers.com, “notch on the gun” is described as follows:

In westerns, the phrase is commonly used metaphorically with each notch on the gun representing one person the gunfighter owning it has killed.

When invited onto The Schilling Show to appear with JATP chair, Carole Thorpe in discussion of his disparaging remarks, the previously always-available supervisor suddenly busied himself for the next several weeks:

From: Dennis Rooker dsrooker@earthlink.net
Date: September 12, 2011 01:11:51 PM EDT
To: Rob Schilling, Carole Thorpe
Subject: Re: Cool Counties on The Schilling Show

Rob,

Thank you for your offer.  Unfortunately, I would not have the time in my schedule over the next couple of weeks to be on your show.

Dennis

Rooker’s assiduous schedule miraculously opened up three days later, when he appeared as a guest on WINA’s Morning News with Rick and Jane to discuss his shifting position on supervisor-appointed “committees” for the proposed 29 Western Bypass.

Cowardice, violent rhetoric, and passive aggression aside, Dennis Rooker is in desperate need of a reality check and perhaps, anger management coursework. The supervisor’s passionate embrace of the leftist-internationalist climate change agenda has upended his usual sense of decorum, resulting in multiple incidents of verbal incontinence and discommodious public lid-flipping.

Unfortunately, the left’s ongoing high profile condemnations of incivility in public discourse are a one-way street. Locally and nationally, liberal attacks on conservatives are met with stony silence from the typically hypersensitive, self-deputized “civility police” as well as from the Marxist mainstream media. Dennis Rooker’s anti-tea-party diatribe highlights not only his own lack of self-control but also America’s pandemic progressive political hypocrisy.

See Dennis Rooker delivering his attack on the tea party (video courtesy of Audrey Welborn):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zYzt1WXW3Y

Kathy Galvin is a perfect reinstatement of the retiring David Brown whose pedantic bromides from the council dais will be sorely missed by the public and by his colleagues, alike. Galvin’s proven ability to bring tedium will ensure council meetings span ample time, and thus, do not end abruptly.  Like Brown, Kathy has demonstrated willingness to receive guidance and direction from experienced party elders, well versed in the manipulation of Charlottesville’s political, economic, and social currents.

Kathy Galvin’s savvy prioritization of time and astute selectivity in discussion venue follow a long-standing tradition of her Democrat council predecessors: elected Charlottesville Democrats can ill afford to engage or even respond to those embracing competing political ideologies. Such individuals represent an insignificant, fractional minority of the city’s general population and are a distraction to the public’s business.  Kathy knows that in a true democracy, time is more efficiently spent on issues of importance to the politically like-minded citizen-majority.

Kathy Galvin’s zeal for direct and overt confrontation of political opponents will be advantageous for council service. Often notoriously contentious, Charlottesville’s City Council meetings routinely require citizen reprimand for those who cross the civility line with unwelcome or unnecessarily challenging remarks, inappropriate laughter, and/or public whispering.

Kathy Galvin will fit well in a five-member council. Her recent proposal to reduce the number of Charlottesville School Board members from seven to five, demonstrates Kathy’s quest to serve in a more powerful, consolidated governing body. Like former Mayor Maurice Cox, Kathy knows that good governance thrives in an environment wherein both discussion and representation are limited to a reasonable, digestible quantity.

Kathy Galvin’s intellectual superiority renders her smarter than any one of her competition. Kathy Galvin’s blunt force of personality renders her stronger than any one of her competition. Kathy Galvin’s willingness to sacrifice human interests for those of plants and animals renders her greener than any one of her competition. And most importantly, Kathy Galvin’s open embrace of top-down, central-planning governance shows that by design she will perpetuate Charlottesville’s single-party status quo. There is no reason to consider any other candidate in the August 20 Charlottesville Democratic Firehouse Primary. Kathy Galvin possesses in abundance, every conceivable trait of the archetypical Charlottesville City Councilor.

In letters obtained by The Schilling Show, the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) has asked the U.S Army Corps of Engineers to rescind the previously issued permit, and the Corps has complied, leaving the project in limbo.

You heard it first on The Schilling Show Blog and News!

Read the VDOT letters and the Army Corps of Engineers response:

McIntire Termination Letter

VDOT Notification Letter

Corps Response Letter