WashPost: Twisted Priorities
From today’s Opinion Section of the Washington Post, - ‘Twisted Priorities‘
That means the owner of a $340,000 house (the county’s average assessment) will be ponying up $103 more next year so that illegal immigrants — many of them employed, paying taxes and supporting families — can be targeted. Budgets are a reflection of priorities, and Prince William’s are badly out of whack, particularly as the county struggles with plunging revenue and an anemic housing market. The crackdown’s $6.4 million price in the next fiscal year is more than the county has budgeted from its general fund for transportation improvements ($4.2 million), public health ($5.2 million) or its office on aging ($3.7 million).
That they are going to spend more on the ‘Immigration Resolution’ than transportation improvements is absurd. People sit in traffic for hours on 66, that in my opinion has more of an impact than ‘illegal immigration.’ Also, not mentioned specifically in the article but one of the major areas where residents had complaints was in residential complaints which has no additional monies set aside to address those concerns. It’s almost as if they believe all other problems would simply go away if they handle this one area. People are going to be disappointed when that doesn’t happen. Hopefully, the County has set aside some cash for the multi-million dollar lawsuit that most likely will end up on their doorstep.
For the first time in a long time, I am simply embarrassed to admit that I live in Prince William County. The Washington Post finalized its comments in a way that reminded me of being a freshman at a nearby women’s college quite a few years ago. We were having our orientation to the honor system, which was quite strict at the time. I will never forget being told that one was either honorable, or dishonorable and that there were no shades of gray.
Mr. Stewart and those who support his demagoguery should be very ashamed. Mr. Stewart, there are no shades of gray. You either have it or you don’t. It appears that you don’t.
(see next quote from the Washington Post Editorial)
Dishonor is an extremely strong word:
The county board’s haste seems less a response to popular demand than to the political agenda and timing of its baldly ambitious chairman, Corey A. Stewart, who has launched a campaign for lieutenant governor. Mr. Stewart, a Republican who has been running for one office or another nearly every year since he moved to Prince William in 2001, has by demagoguery transformed a relatively harmonious county into a hotbed of intolerance. That is the platform on which he evidently hopes to base his current race, and no wonder, since he has largely ignored the issues on which he was originally elected — traffic, growth and development. It is a wretched legacy for Mr. Stewart, and a dishonor for the county’s 380,000 residents.
3/12/08 Washington Post Editorial (in part)
Thank you, WAPO for printing this!!
DISHONOR is the right word.
And most of us have probably lived here longer than Mr. “I’m a God” Stewart, the man meaning to make political history by USING PWC.
A good editorial. Stewart hopes to move on to the next position before all his failures are apparent even to a dullard. He’s proven he doesn’t have the ability to tackle a volatile issue with any degree of foresight or tolerance.
I’ve lived in this county since 1978 and even though some of my friends from Fairfax teased me about living in the sticks or Red-Neckville, I’ve only become truly embarrassed to live here since last summer.
Folks, Fairfax is just up the road, I’m sure they’d love to have you!
Red-Neckville!! Shame on you, why it’s like referring to illegals as criminals!
Mexicans Without Borders……………………. not racist
Borders Without Mexicans………………………… racist
I don’t get it?
You’ll have to cast the shame on my friends in Fairfax, Second Alamo, because they’re the ones who labelled us thus.
Alamo, if Red-Neckville brings about a scathing shame on you, what on earth does Manass-hole do? How about Fred-necksburg?
The Moon-howler has been howling a long time and has heard a lot of the little town slurs. (innocent look)
As a former Mass-hole (from MA), I didn’t really have an issue with changing into a Manass-hole when I lived there.
The town I grew up in was pretty red-neck at the time, so what the hay……”You know you’re a redneck when….”
Rednecks can be kinda cute.
RACISTS are NEVER cute.
Ahhhh, some humor at last!
Curtsy…HOWWWWWWLLLLLL
I guess I shouldn’t tell you about the proposed boundary changes between Dumfries and Manassas….it will known as Dumassas.
just kidding old joke 
Once again, with this kind of great publicity, I’m sure new high end businesses will be rolling in by the droves….NOT. If we ever hope to sustain our county with more than real estate taxes, Corey and the rest of the Board better figure out a way to fix this PR nightmare!
Thanks for the humor all, it was much needed!
Hey Administrator, (or whose ever blog this is)
I’d like to see what you have to say about the information in the following link:
http://www.bvbl.net/index.php/2008/03/12/the-zapatistas-start-getting-attention/#more-2142
The web sites stand for themselves, no smoke and mirrors here!
Perhaps you should post it here, SA. I’m “forbidden” as are many others here.
Outside of that, I don’t know why HSM/BVBL should be against any “fringe” group when THEY are fringe themselves. Oh that’s right. To much competition. “Do as I say, not as I do.”
Alamo,
Same pictures that have been reposted. My personal belief is that they are used to fire up the base. All groups with a cause do that in one way or the other. I have always called it the opposite of a winning football season.
If you are winning football, your fans all show up and cheer. With a ’cause,’ if you are winning, your base dries up. You have to keep the faithful faithful and interested. Nothing like a few masked men and women and the s or c word to stir up the conservative masses.
I tend to take people like the author with a grain of salt. I don’t think Tom D is a mainstream person after reading his views on other issues.
Ditto here Alamo, you are posting to links that several of us have been banned from viewing. Hmmm, maybe the fact that we are banned is indicitive of a broader problem with HSM. That would lead me to question ANYTHING that is posted on that website.
According to the UVA study, the majority of Hispanics in Prince William are legal residents meaning citizens or legal residents. ‘Illegals’ typically are from families in a mixed immigration status.
My quick answer about this notion that ‘illegals’ are zapatistas, leftists, communists, terrorists, and probably a host of other ‘ists’, gang bangers, disease carrying, sexual predators & child molesters is that this is a tactic that has been employed repeatedly with each new wave of immigrants. Do we need a history lesson here? The object is to make the immigrants seem ignorant, dangerous and less than human, a force that will ‘destroy our American way of life.’ I believe we should be extremely cautious in believing these arguments.
SA
I don’t see much difference between MWB and BVBL/HSM. Same tactics different sides, but the tactics of each are so sensational that whatever points there may be are lost. So I dismiss both equally for “how they do it”.
Here’s my personal take on the demonstrations at the McCoart building. When people looked at the crowd they perceived that the majority of those people were undocumented and it cemented in their minds that ’something must be done.’ But let me say, I walked through the crowd and I think you’d be surprised. Let me tell you something funny. I saw this weird flag and I didn’t recognized it, it was kind of checkered like a race car flag with black, red & yellow. I’m standing with a group of people that I’d never met before and asked in English - what Country is that from? The guy beside me answers in perfect English - its the University of Maryland flag but then he corrects himself very quickly and said - no, it’s the Maryland State flag. Later I was standing closer to the Help Save Manassas crowd where someone asked the same question. There was even a preconceived notion in my own mind that it was from another country instead of a state flag. My point simply being in that I believe there was a perception of the crowd that perhaps backfired. I often wonder if the crowd had been more diverse if the perception would have been the same.
Admin, aside from HSM members, there were not many pro resolution representatives in that crowd - inside or outside, that side did not show up in droves. MWB organized the crowd outside so their diversity was limited to the group MWB represented. The guy with the Maryland State Flag lived in Prince Georges County and when MWB posted web announcements about the demonstration, he responded with several friends. He was from Mexico.
Lucky,
That isn’t the point Admin was making. The point was that some random person in the crowd, new more about state flags than they did, and that the person who Admin asked the question to spoke perfect english. What does your point have to with? I agree with your broader assessment though abut MWB organizing the event. Although I spoke out against the resolution, I did not feel stand with the larger crowd, I felt like I would have been an interloper for some reason. Looking back, I wish I would have!
I was just telling you about the guy with the MD flag - no point, just sharing.
MWB could have had broader support if they cultivated the entire community that agreed with their viewpoint, but they only concentrated on the Hispanic population. This had the same effect on people that the marchers in 2006 did when they carried Mexican and Salvadoran flags. They had no support or got no support from the majority.
If may of the Hispanics in the groups were legal, meaning that they waited in line and spent time and money to become citizens, then why in the world would they encourage others to just hop across the border. Especially if they still had relatives they were trying to bring into the country legally? That just seems counterproductive. Surely the more immigrants that turn up here illegally will reduce the number allowed to come legally. We can’t take them all! How do you know if any of them were legal? I guess that’s your assumption. You have yours, and I have mine.
SA
Do you REALLY think all those people were illegal in those groups?
Found your site. See some of my posts have been removed from BVBL. Guess Letiecq can’t take it head on.
Juturna, I don’t think that SA thinks that they were illegal, he is just asking how can you tell if a majority were legal. Did someone take a pole or something? I’m not saying that most were illegal but the same gets said about peole assuming that most of the guys standing at various 7-11’s are illegal. People always say “gee, how do you know their illegal”.
Let’s see…they all had to give their names and addresses as part of the public record as well as being shown on tv. I think it’s very improbable that they were here illegally.
I imagine MWB has a larger, active membership than HSM has. It’s easy to go to the PWC fair and get people who are in a good mood to sign up as members. To get them to actually become involved is something entirely different. Two thousand people is still a piddly amount considering the population of this county. Charge the members $10 for a yearly membership and then tell me how committed and large your organization is.
BTW, did anyone read GL’s spiel today about single-handedly saving PWC from every vice known to man and saving the coffers of the County. Ha ha. Talk about the egomaniacal rantings of a demogogue.
So if you give your name and address your a US citizen? I didn’t know it was that easy. My point is when someone comments that “illegals hang out at 7-11’s looking for work” some people reply with “so how do you know they are illegal”. Same goes for this situation, you see a big crowd protesting against stricter immigration and say “most of them were legal”. My question is how do you know, because they gave their name and where they live? So that’s all it takes?
Also, I did happen to read GL’s comments on the MJM’s article. I didn’t see where he claims he “single-handedly saving PWC from every vice known to man and saving the coffers of the County”.
I would read more closely. Seems to me that Censored is right on the money.
how so Moon-howler?
It’s right here:
“…one dedicated community activist manages to help build consensus for policies that have contributed to the near eradication of residential overcrowding, resulted in the deportation of hundreds of criminal aliens including those which would have otherwise been released back into our communities and entered in the Sex Offender Registry, and saved millions of taxpayer dollars from being used to support the unlawful presence of illegal aliens…”
“…School overcrowding is finally abating, our health care system is no longer being crushed under the weight of illegal aliens who evade their bills, our communities are safer, and public facilities are more available to lawful residents than they have been in years. My efforts to help achieve these goals have come at great personal sacrifice, and while I require no thanks or public recognition for the role I played in achieving these stunning successes…”
as quoted by greg:”That’s the intent of free political speech, to provide a means of settling political disputes through debate rather than brawls. It might not always be pleasant, and may even be enraging and sometimes inflammatory, but throughout the history of this nation it has been proven time after time as the best means of developing public policy. ”
PA-LEEEZ, if that isn’t the biggest box of used kitty litter propoganda! What hypocrisy, he loves to play games, block people without them knowing that no one is viewing their comments but them, and then finally, when he doesn’t even want you viewing his blog, he blocks your IP address so you can’t even view his website at all. He wants to dare talk about free speech? Better practice what you preach silly silly boy!
Hi Tonto, welcome to the REAL free world!
Lucky Duck,
I do agree with your point, that MWB would have fared better had they reached out to a broader audience. I certainly would have felt more comfortable joining the gathering that day.
MS. Independent thinker,
TEE-HEE ( IF it were NOT so funny) I agree. I understand a blog being owned and the owner can do whatever they choose to do BUT when you start to see a pattern, you have to ask why.
Yes, that is what people need to find out about Greg, he isn’t what he says he is. So, if I were to follow that logic, why would I then believe any of what he has said to further his agenda. I believe there are people in communities, white, hispanic, whomever, that are really suffering right now. I believe the impact of what has happened to this county has yet to be fully appreciated, and I don’t mean appreciated in a good way. There were so many more ways to deal with these community issues.
Does anyone know if membership fees were collected for Help Save Manassas?
Admin,
NO memberships fees, just a pledge.
http://www.helpsavemanassas.com/
Well no wonder they were able to get so many members.
How many are left? That’s what I want to know…..
When will GL man up and take on the Post like he took on MJM? My guess, never.
http://www.examiner.com/a-1280424~Supervisors_struggle_to_set_tax_rate.html?cid=rss-Washington_DC
LISTEN LIVE NOW:
http://www.co.prince-william.va.us/bocs/audio/default.htm