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An Interesting Juxtaposition
By Greg L | 8 October 2006 | Prince William County | 6 Comments
The Washington Post has an article (”Pr. William Candidates Split Over Growth“) on the front page of the Metro section regarding the recent debate between Corey Stewart and Sharon Pandak, who are seeking the Chairman’s slot on the Prince William County Board of County Supervisors. In the Prince William section, is another article entitled “County Is Losing Woodland To Builders” (sorry, no link available) and a picture in the front of the section with the caption “Houses Sprout Where Forests Stood”.
Does anyone wonder why Stewart’s message of putting a halt to out of control development is resonating in the County?
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6 Comments
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I’m glad it’s news now that there’s huge open sky where there used to be forests. Often, there have been huge changes in the landscape and for some reason it is not news. In the past two weeks the area south of Potmac Hospital from opitiz blvd to dale blvd and from the power lines to 95 have been cleared. It’s got to be 100’s of acres. If you add that to the other recented bulldozed areas along rt. 1.; port potomac, potomac club, harbor station it’s got to be 1000’s of acres. It’s ease to believe we’ve lost 20,000 as the artical states.
Most of this is houses. If you add all the people in the new houses to the all immigrants packing in the older houses in woodbridge this is a catastrophie in slow motion on a number of different levels.
Cory Stewart has been the only one voting against this insane development again and again. Pandaks let’s all agree and work toward consensus will not work in dealing with the developers. The developers and their shareholders purpose is to make money witch is fine but there needs to be a counter balance in government working for the residents interests.
If Stewart wins, it will mark an important shift of Republicans in local politics. Many of our candidates, lead by Jerry Kilgore, espoused pro-growth sentiments and got buried. If Stewart wins, I think he will, he will show the way for Republicans to win locally is to emphasis slow growth and protecting the area from hyper growth. His election will resonate here in Fairfax and in the rest of NOVA. Lets hope he can pull this off. BTW, what is funny is that the Post really doesn’t like Stewart, but seems to agree that growth is out of control. How does that jive?
The Post appears to be more interested in creating an illusion of consensus than reporting on community issues. They are clearly promoting Pandak’s “we must build consensus with developers” message and downplaying Stewart’s call for better government policies to manage growth and development. Fair and accurate coverage seems to take a back seat to reporting that supports Post advertisors, such as the developers.
This is certainly true for Post coverage of Prince William. The last place to look for news about growth and development issues is the Prince William Extra, which limits itself to high school sports along with some news about Fairfax or Loudoun.
There’s lots of examples in the Post’s article on the Stewart/Pandak debate. A personal favorite was touting Pandak’s role in writing the county’s Chesapeake Bay regulations. Hmmm…these are the very same regulations that, according to a formal resolution by the state oversight board, fell below Virginia’s mandates enacted to protect the Chesapeake Bay.
Although this was a very big deal to the county, the Post was apparently not interested in these trivial details and never reported on the problems. Instead, in the interest of “fair” play, they occasionally report on the big picture losses without including information about how developer influences on local governments are facilitating the problem. Certainly, the Post’s developer advertisers would be unhappy if citizens knew more about the problems Stewart is trying to highlight. It surely looks like the Post is more interested in keeping developer advertisors happy than reporting the news.
My favorite line from the “candidates forum” article was that Pandak laughed when she heard that she was the developers candidate. She may have laughed, but she didn’t deny it, did she?
what I do not understand is how the COMpost can opine against out of control growth, yet support unchecked illegal immigration. We have anywhere between 10 and 20 million illegal aliens in this Nation, how much less growth would we have in this area, and in the Country as a whole without the illegals?
I urge any Republicans interested in conservation to check out Republicans for Environmental Protection (rep.org), and by all means join if you find common ground! Our trademarked slogan is Conservation IS Conservative, which certainly makes sense, doesn’t it? I’m one of many Virginia sportsmen that are sick and tired of so-called conservatives not wanting to conserve a damn thing other than developer profits. I’ll stick my money on Teddy Roosevelt being a paragon of a real Republican as opposed to many of those “conservatives” interested in nothing but greed and the almighty dollar. There also is a real link between continued illegal and legal immigration at high levels and the housing industry, that really is at odds with the well being of many Americans. Let’s conserve more of what God has given us, and not be so arrogant that we can do better.
Jeff Wolinski, Virginia State Coordinator, REP