More Blog Stuff

Bensblurb #502 10/30/09

Still more blog stuff for your perusal.(Welcomed? See my note at bottom)

Is it just me, or what? I’ve been more aggravated in the past week or so than any comfortable retiree has any reason to be. So maybe things just appear unreasonable only to me. But, since misery loves company, it’s said, see if you agree that something is surely out of whack.

For sure, October isn’t my favorite month anyhow, at least ever since that Black Monday in 1987 when the stock market plunged. And sure enough, stocks went south again today.

Moreover, the Rocky Mountains west of Denver have been clobbered by a three-foot snow blizzard rare for October out there. Take that, global-warming apostles.

The war on terror, as we used to call it, has suffered reverses, and our commander in chief (far from dithering, as our former Veep called it) is just about ready to make a decision on troop strength over there. Soon as the election Tuesday hereabouts is decided, no doubt.

But his military followers, always ready to salute and proceed smartly, may still be smarting over what he once said about their attitudes in general. I don’t remember the exact context of Obama’s remarks, but the quotation is accurate, I’d wager: "Look, it's an all volunteer force. Nobody made these guys go to war. They had to have known and accepted the risks. Now they whine about bearing the costs of their choice? It doesn't compute."

That’s hardly an apt quote leading up to Veterans Day, I’d say.

Amid the general gloom, I must admit the election prospects here in Virginia next week look just fine. The Democrat running for governor has been pretty lame. Sample:
Why Creigh Deeds is losing: by blogger Moe Lane:
It’s because of this question --as presented by Richmond’s Jason Roop--and the answers:.
Can you name one good reason that someone should vote for your opponent?
DEEDS(D): [Long pause] You know, I can name you a thousand good reasons why they should vote for me. I’m the best-prepared person to be the next governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia. … Bob is a guy that I’ve always gotten along with, but I get along with most people. I work hard to get along with people. I don’t agree with Bob on a great deal.
McDONNELL(R): He’s a good family man. He’s worked hard to represent his district well for 18 years. To me, he’s a good story of somebody living and accessing the American dream. You know, he tells the story about … first guy in his family to go to college with four $20 [bills] in his pocket and now he’s competing for the job held by Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry. To me, that’s a great story. I think there’s a hundred reasons why I’d be a better governor than him, but for the way, and this is his own personal life story, the way he has told it — it obviously happened because of tremendous hard work, tremendous perseverance to be able to get to the level that he is at, and I think that’s very admirable.

My conclusion: A landslide for McDonnell and his running mates.
　
Now, thanks to a recent pass-along, permit a digression from the heavy stuff, with a request. I usually don't sign these "add your name" lists that appear in my email, but this one is too important. This one has been circulating for months. Please, keep it going!
To show your SUPPORT for Obama's health care reform, please go to the end of the list and add your name to the rapidly growing list below and send it on to your entire e-mail list.
1. Nancy Pelosi
2.


　
Back to the serious stuff. Too painful in places even to read, I recommend you look up Peggy Noonan’s column in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal. Talk about pessimism, she’s all that and more, with good reason about problems we face. Excerpts:

“The new economic statistics put growth at a healthy 3.5% for the third quarter. We should be dancing in the streets. No one is, because no one has any faith in these numbers. Waves of money are sloshing through the system, creating a false rising tide that lifts all boats for the moment. The tide will recede. The boats aren't rising, they're bobbing...No one believes the bad time is over...Among the things swept away in 2008 was public confidence in the experts. The experts missed the crash. They'll miss the meaning of this moment, too.

“The biggest threat to America...is that people are becoming and have become disheartened, that this condition is reaching critical mass, and that it afflicts most broadly and deeply those members of the American leadership class who are not in Washington, most especially those in business...
"They do not think they can make it better."

...[T]he last great recession, in the late mid- to late 1970s and early '80s was in some ways worse than the one we're experiencing ...[Y]et there was still a prevalent feeling of hope...Everyone had a path through. Now they don't. The most sophisticated Americans, experienced in how the country works on the ground, can't figure a way out.
“This is historic...Americans are starting to think the problems we are facing cannot be solved.... [The] government, from the White House through Congress, and so many state and local governments, seems to be demonstrating every day that they cannot make things better. They are not offering a new path, they are only offering old paths—spend more, regulate more, tax more in an attempt to make us more healthy locally and nationally...

“While Americans feel increasingly disheartened, their leaders evince a mindless . . . one almost calls it optimism, but it is not that...We are governed at all levels by America's luckiest children, sons and daughters of the abundance, and they call themselves optimists but they're not optimists—they're unimaginative. They don't have faith,...They are stupid and they are callous, and they don't mind it when people become disheartened. They don't even notice....."


FINALLY, Response, please. I have sent out three of these electronic-only blurbs to you in the past several days. If I can keep doing it, would you like for me to? Seriously, I would welcome your feedback. Thanks, Ben Blankenship

Cruising the blogs, again

Bensblurb # 501....10/28/09
We’re cruising the blogs, again....
　
The Washington Post, which features the motto "An independent newspaper" at the top of its editorial page, endorsed Democratic candidates in 25 of 29 races for the November 3 elections in Virginia, in addition to supporting the Democrats running for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general, [all three of whom will most likely fail]--News Busters

Today, Dana Milbank’s article in the Post “covered” a senate committee hearing featuring arguments favoring the global warming bill. Noting that Oklahoma’s Sen. James Inhofe argued in vain against a 28 minute pro-control rant by Sen. John Kerry, Milbank concluded by writing, “Nobody doubted that Inhofe had a response. The doubt was whether the response would make any sense.” -- As they say, fair and balanced.

Yet, believe it or not, “Global warming has ended, conclusively....The Earth’s average temperature has begun its steep decline ....the Sun has entered a state of ‘hibernation’... [bringing] long cold climates to the Earth. ...” --John Casey, Space and Science Research Center.

& Speaking of the press, here’s George Will last Sunday on a talk show: “No president in the history of the Republic has less reason to complain about his treatment in the press than Barack Obama. Liberals have Academia, they have the mainstream media, they have Hollywood. They’re all for diversity in everything but thought.”
　
On a more important subject, the economy’s blues today are highlighted in a Hot Air piece by Ed Morrissey: “The best and brightest find better-paying jobs elsewhere because they are the best and brightest. What does that leave behind? Usually, either people who can’t afford to check out because of their age, or people who simply can’t compete in the open job market because of a lack of marketable skills, accomplishment, or experience. Of course, this describes exactly what has happened to the firms in which American taxpayers have invested hundreds of billions of dollars.”

& One of many other problems today:
“Former Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham , writing in the Weekly Standard, decries the Obama administration's unwillingness to embrace nuclear power to meet his energy goals. President Obama says he's committed to reducing the use of fossil fuels. But Abraham shows that, without using nuclear power, reliance on fossil fuels will almost certainly increase...nuclear power accounts for about 20 percent of our nation's power supply, (compared to 80 percent in France). But if no new nuclear plants are built, the percentage of our power supplied by nukes will decline to about 14 percent in the next ten years, as older reactors go off-line....renewable sources -- wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass -- account for three percent of total net electrical generation. Thus, even if renewable sources quadruple over the next ten years, the combined production from emission-free sources (nuclear plus renewable) will be only slightly higher than it is today. ” --Paul Miringoff, in Power Line blog.

Here’s a fresh report from longtime friend Dennis Avery, author and world food economist:
“Environmentalists are standing in the way of feeding humanity through their opposition to biotechnology, farm chemicals and nitrogen fertilizer,” said billionaire Bill Gates in a talk at the World Food Prize Symposium in Des Moines Oct. 15.
“Gates could have said with equal truth that the same environmentalists, by demanding organic-only farming, are risking the future of the planet’s wildlife. The world will need more than twice as much food by 2050 to feed a peak population of 8 billion affluent humans and their pets. Gates believes we should get that additional food from higher yields on the 37 percent of the earth’s land area we already farm, not by threatening massive numbers of wildlife species by clearing more land for low-yield crops.
“Ironically, another speaker at the symposium—economist Jeffrey Sachs who directs the Earth Institute at Columbia University—criticized agriculture as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Sachs, of course, was implying that either the world’s people must somehow sharply cut back on food and manufacturing, or cut human numbers by some enormous percentage.”

News Busters: A columnist for the UK Guardian wants to save the earth by thinning the ranks of humans that are a cruel blight upon it. By his account, population control is the only viable solution to the destruction of the planet."The worst thing you or I can do for the planet is to have children," writes the Guardian's Alex Renton.

Meanwhile, back to Virginia’s election, here’s Curt Anderson, in Politico: “Memo to the White House political smart guys...There will be plenty of time after the election for you to explain that Creigh Deeds’s loss in Virginia had nothing to do with the president’s 25-point drop in job approval.
It had nothing to do with the fact that a majority of Americans in every survey disapprove of the policies the president is advocating.
Nothing to do with the 4.2 million jobs lost since Inauguration Day.
Nothing to do with the 36 percent rise in unemployment over the first six months of this presidency.
Nothing to do with the skyrocketing debt and deficit or the federal government takeover of the auto industry and the banking sector.
Nothing to do with the fact that Deeds is openly advocating tax increases for the state, just as your administration is preparing to do at the federal level.
And certainly nothing to do with the president’s continual push to create a government-run health care system.

My comment: And wasn't it such a short time ago that the sophisticates were laughing out loud over the antics of those of us attending Tea Parties. They won't be laughing after Nov. 3. Rather, some will be packing their bags in defeat.
--Ben Blankenship
　

Cruising the Blogs, again

Bensblurb # 500 (that’s five hundred of them since I began these mailings)

　
* THIS JUST IN: From Breitbart:"There are those who will suggest that moving toward clean energy will destroy our economy," Obama said, a day after the release of a poll showing fewer Americans see solid evidence of global warming--as the world stays cooler so far in this century..
　
* And from News Busters: NBC's Brian Williams allocated a few seconds Thursday night to how a new Pew survey discovered the percent of Americans who, in his words, “believe there's solid evidence of global warming...has dropped off significantly” while “the number of people who say they don't believe in climate change at all has doubled in that time.”...But instead of crediting Americans for recognizing...reality since global temperatures have not risen an iota since 1998, Williams attributed the change to how “in a down economy, people are less sensitive to the environment.”

* More From :News Busters: Katie Couric has demanded "humility" from Wall Streeters making seven-figure incomes. This from a woman pulling down. . . eight figures [an estimated $15 mil a year] from CBS while cementing her Evening News' caboose status.
　
* Meanwhile, plenty of energy right here. Instapundit’s Glen Reynolds quotes MIT study::New natural gas discoveries. “Vast amounts of the clean-burning fossil fuel have been discovered in shale deposits, setting off a gas rush. But how it will affect our energy use is still uncertain. . . . Natural gas offers advantages over other fossil fuels. It burns cleaner than coal, producing much less carbon dioxide. Since coal-fired power generation is responsible for a third of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, replacing at least some of that coal with gas could significantly reduce such pollution. And using natural gas to replace gasoline and diesel fuel in vehicles could reduce the country’s reliance on foreign oil.”

COMMENT: Yeah, except the administration is making all such land it can get its hands on off-limits to drilling.

* Victor Davis Hanson (in Pajamas Media): Right now to save America we need some steady leadership that reassures businesses of lower taxes, less government spending, no new regulations, educational reform to improve the work force, and confident expansionary energy exploration and development. Instead, we get a prescription to terrify private enterprise: Mr. President, every time you besmirch someone as greedy, lying, and unduly rich, some business, somewhere, pulls in its horns.

COMMENT: Obama is besmirching a lot nowadays. Fox News, insurance companies, Chamber of Commerce, global warming skeptics. Oh yes, and his White House is disowning the failing Virginia campaign of Democrat Deeds for governor, because Deeds wouldn’t go along with its political advice. Fox’s Chris Wallace rightly labeled White Housers as cry babies recently, perhaps reflecting their chief’s thin skin and the difficulty in making Obamacare the law and his plunging approval ratings.
　
　
WHY? Here’s Jose Antonio Vargas, in Hufington Post: Where are the voters under 30 who preferred Obama over McCain by a staggering 66-32 percent margin, the biggest of any age group? ..And now? ..Team Obama is now in governing mode. And the grassroots, tech-powered movement anchored by young voters...has taken a backseat to the back-room, inside-the-Beltway realities of Washington."
And here‘s my published COMMENT: “The young who were so enthralled by Obama are getting older, and hopefully wiser, if they aren't already laid off and facing more immediate concerns of their own...Thus, the pooh has gone out of the youth movement. The real energy and anger now inflame the major voting class: Older Americans. And by the way, we codgers never were hot for Obama in the first place. White Americans, after all, favored old man McCain over the kid. Older Americans, the kind who populate Tea Parties, are motivated by fear as much as anything else--fear that our good health insurance might get frittered away and fear that our youngsters will have to pay what we have largely avoided and won't be around long to care about---the monster deficit piling up that future generations will have to face or become wards of the Chinese.
*****

Browsing the Blogs

Bensblurb #499

John Hinderaker, writing in his Power Line blog:
The Democrats' assault on our economy is proceeding at such a frenetic pace that what would normally be front-page news can easily be lost in the shuffle. On the back burner, for now, is Waxman-Markey, the Dems' carbon tax bill. At the "http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/oct/21/democrats-hidden-gas-tax/?feat=home_commentary", Senators Kit Bond and Kay Hutchison remind us what a disaster the carbon tax would be:
The controversial climate-change legislation winding its way through Congress will impose a massive new national gas tax on the American people. We discovered this by analyzing what the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill would do to gas prices and what Americans spend on gasoline, diesel and jet fuels. We found that cap-and-trade legislation will levy a $3.6 trillion gas-tax increase that will impact every American and important segments of our economy.
Only in the Age of Obama, a fiscal Armageddon of unprecedented proportion, could a $3.6 trillion tax increase be an afterthought.
Americans travel more than 200 million vehicle miles each month, and annually we spend nearly $1.2 trillion on gasoline and oil. The average household spends 5 percent of its annual budget on fuel. For many, gasoline is a mandatory expense. And this legislation disproportionately hits middle and lower income households that tend to have longer commutes to work and must drive in order to work. These families will be hit especially hard by The projected $1 per gallon increase for the additional gas tax the cap-and-trade legislation will bring.The whole point of Waxman-Markey is to make energy too expensive for us to be able to afford, so we'll use less of it. It is, in other words, a policy of deliberate impoverishment. As with health care "reform," the Democrats are hoping to slip the carbon tax past you before you figure out what the legislation means.

Here’s Roger Simon, in Pajamas Media:
Team Obama certainly ran a brilliant election campaign, but since they left Chicago for Washington, they seem to have dropped about 25 IQ points – or do they think the rest of the world is like Chicago? I’m not even sure it’s that simple, because Moscow in some ways (corruption) resembles Chicago, but they sure seem to have misjudged the Russians, among many other things.
Of course, they can (and do) blame...Fox News, but that’s a sure fire prescription for having them tank even further. Even the New York Times admitted that Team Obama was blind to the most conventional of wisdom about “punching upwards not downwards,” thus benefiting Fox instead of themselves by attacking the network. I always thought the Bushies were a disaster at public relations, but the Obamanoids are giving them a run for their money.

Here’s me, reacting in the Huffington Post this week:
This reaction was in reference to a piece by Robert Creamer on the glories of progressives (liberals) being in control and how great our huge government really is.
As an American once said, "I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."- Thomas JeffersonAnd, of more recent vintage: "Now the national terrain is thick with federal programs, and with state, county, city and town entities and programs, from coast to coast...it's crowded."--Peggy Noonan, in Wall Street Journal, 10/17/09That's putting it mildly. Gimme a brake.
In reaction to another HuffPo piece: (Pardon the Interruption, by Steven Weber: Our planet is in peril..)
Our survival as a species surely doesn't depend on making our planet cooler. That goofy effort ignores the fact that people live better in cozy warmth. Further, it takes much more energy to keep us warm than to cool our fevered brows. Thus, forget Copenhagen and enjoy life, friends----Ben Blankenship.

Watts Up blog , on why many moderate scientists don’t speak out.
I’ve seen this phenomenon of extreme views being the most vocal in my own hometown of Chico, where a small vocal group of people often hold sway of the city council because they are the ones that show up regularly to protest, well, just about anything. The council, seeing this regular vocal feedback, erroneously concludes that the view accurately represents the majority of city residents. The result is a train wreck, and the council sits there scratching their heads wondering why after making such decisions, they get their ears burned off by people unhappy with the decision. Bottom line, we all need to be more active in the public input process if we want decisions to be accurately reflected.
COLUMBUS, Ohio – People with relatively extreme opinions may be more willing to publicly share their views than those with more moderate views, according to a new study. The key is that the extremists have to believe that more people share their views than actually do, the research found. How do people with extreme views believe they are in the majority? This can happen in groups that tend to lean moderately in one direction on an issue. Those that take the extreme version of their group’s viewpoint may believe that they actually represent the true views of their group...
　

Dems should vote on a Wednesday

Aside from previously blasting presidential candidate Obama, the Democrats in general and Creigh Deeds, the lame candidate for Virginia’s governor, I have mostly stayed out of partisan politics in recent columns. Surely you’ve noticed.

There have admittedly been a few swipes at our mostly malfunctioning Stafford Board of Supervisors, dominated by a Democrat majority of “aginners:” anti-business, anti-development, anti-SPCA-BPOL . But I said nothing, you must admit, in criticism of our daffy planning commission that fashioned a mighty comprehensive plan bereft of cost considerations and sufficient public input.

Incidentally, friend Jo Knight, a long-time real estate broker in Stafford, told the board the truth about adoption of a comprehensive plan. It would make small businesses wanting to locate here think twice about the added costs in time and money of having to jump through that added bureaucratic hoop.

In any event, since time is drawing nigh for all of us to vote on political candidates again, let me become more specific and un-bipartisan, unlike my usual meanderings.

Except as noted below, the Board of Supervisor candidates are all thugs, IMHO. Lacking any ideas to solve problems in Stafford, they only attack their opponents. Watch for more of their mud slinging until the election.

The good guys:
--Paul Milde, our most passionate and industrious incumbent who keeps the pot boiling and his opponents seething.
--Mark Dudenhefer, our long-time champion of safer roads, a retired Marine Corps colonel whose opponent is an inexperienced youngster campaigning negatively.
--Susan Stimpson, a candidate with a fresh face, who will bring proven skills and a needed distaff perspective to a board recently seen as an old boys club.
--Gary Snellings will represent Hartwood and speak for all its residents, not just the radicals and special interests. He has a steady, mature hand that will help return the board to civility.

If they all win, given the mood hereabouts concerning the present board’s hopelessly liberal majority, we conservatives will be dancing in the streets. Well, perhaps most folks.

I’ll be content to say I told you so.(I once did dance in the streets for George Bush just because of Al Gore's lofty and bellicose ignorance.)

With so little else to cheer for nowadays, from the Redskins to the White House to our collapsing dollar (“Sound as a dollar?”--R.I.P, alas), a Republican sweep in Stafford and Richmond will help stem the national adverse tide, let’s hope.

Which reminds me. With financial problems all around ( despite that found $5 million on the county’s books), and with little in sight to signal improvement anytime soon, it would appear downright foolish for us to approve that proposed bond issue for Parks and Rec. One failed the last time we went to the polls and we should dump this one too.
Meanwhile, on the recession-fighting front nationally, the Administration’s stimulus shovels still stand ready but idle, it seems. Tons of money wasted in the process, it says here, as I nevertheless remain comfortable in our still-conservative and prudent county.
　
　

There ought to be a law...

There ought to be a law...

Most likely there already is, just awaiting some eager bureaucrat’s fleshing out of implementing regulations. That’s the real problem today, so many more bureaucrats at all levels of government with more power than ever before.

It’s said that 40 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product goes for local, state and federal government spending. So it’s no surprise that most of Washington’s vast economic stimulus funds have gone to prop up unproductive government activities and staffing. Those shovels are still ready and waiting, and waiting.

When Congress passed a law to set up the Environmental Protection Agency, who could have imagined that someday it would be empowered to dictate how much carbon dioxide we may legally exhale? But that’s the case today.

Or who would have thought the Consumer Product Safety Commission would try to regulate even what’s sold at neighborhood yard sales? Hello. Ditto for light bulbs

If promoted by an agency or official influential enough, even the looniest government programs often see the wasteful light of day. To wit: The cash for clunkers program. You would think its promoter would have been run out of town by now. Think again. The idea is now being applied to household appliances.

And Washington pressures us to swap our SUVs for miniature cars, explaining that the resulting increase in highway death and crippling injury is a small price to pay for decreased carbon emissions.

Even the Washington Post sees the light: “[Obama appointees] are awakening a vast regulatory apparatus with authority over nearly every U.S. workplace.”

As a result of such foolishness, our taxes will surely rise and government will go ever deeper into debt while raising, for example, our energy and health care costs. Debt may be hard to understand, but look at it this way. It’s said that 40 percent of individual income taxes this year will go to pay just for the interest on the debt.

Proliferating laws, regulations and enforcers are choking whatever is left of initiative in the private, profit-seeking sector--the lifeblood of our formerly vigorous economy. Do you feel “sound as a dollar?” Really that bad, huh.

And let’s admit what else stares everyone in the face. Most government bureaucracies protect sloth and wastefulness, not thrift. It’s no accident that the largest employee unions are located right there in the innards of government.

“[Supreme government] covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence...”--French historian Alexis de Tocqueville

Meantime here in 2009 we get sidetracked from what’s important by silly campaigns like the crusade against global warming. For perspective, consider: Just as American Indians once danced around the fire to make it rain out west, global warming gurus will huddle in Copenhagen to make it cool. They will thus further confirm doubts about the evolution of “man,” especially since one such specimen a million years older than our previously honored eldest has been unearthed. Our latest contra-indication: Congress.

Tea Parties, anyone?

A tough job that many covet. Why?

"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors." --Greek philosopher Plato ( 428-348 B.C.)
It kinda reminds me of the rhetorical battles within our Stafford County Board of Supervisors--but, “by your inferiors?” Maybe so in a few instances of recent memory. But there’s one thing they all are definitely not inferior about.
It’s their superior tolerance of and patience with board meetings and hearings that drag on and on. I’d say they earn their money and then some.
As for the rest of us who aren’t engaged enough to stand in line and personally say our piece on any scheduled subject in the board chambers, we absentees do have the luxury of recording the more contentious meetings. They are carried live most Tuesday evenings over Comcast channel 23 and Cox on 24.
Thus, in 2008 when that contentious hearing on adopting a special new tax on businesses here (BPOL for short) commenced, I had known that great numbers of citizens were slated to voice their opinions (mostly against it). So I decided to stay home and watch them on TV.
But I got my fill before midnight and decided to record the rest of the proceedings for later viewing. Good thing, for that exhausting de-facto circus, which ended with supervisors openly scrapping, lasted until about 3:30 AM.
Worse, although the board majority finally voted in favor of the tax, it didn’t settle anything. Since it isn’t scheduled to begin taking effect until next year, there’s time for a newly elected board next month to rescind the tax even before it starts, depending of course on who wins contested seats.
　
Another marathon board session, this September, involved approving or refusing the application of the SPCA dog and cat folks to establish a non-kill facility in the county. This one died mercifully about midnight.
Which reminds me of other endless meetings years ago by Aquia Harbour’s boards of directors. They got so sick of them that, when another chairman was elected they voted to end all meetings by midnight. Voila! The lesson is that the presiding officer has the duty to move the meetings along. Change the county guard (please!) and things should get better.
The SPCA’s midnight miracle last month came about thanks to an astute supervisor. You may recall that most folks speaking earlier in the meeting favored the project, to be centered at the former nursing home property off Andrew Chapel Road. However, it seemed the weight of supervisor sentiments favored rejection, since the nearby owners of very upscale homes in Meadowbrook Estates were so much against it.
Finally, things were reaching an impasse. Supervisor Paul Milde, in whose district the SPCA facility was proposed, stayed passionate for approval. Even though the facility’s applicant, Bill Hoyt, had made erudite and heartfelt presentations, they didn’t seem to sway the majority.
Then Supervisor Cord Sterling of the Rock Hill district proposed a compromise. Not even Milde liked it at first. But his proposal was (1) that the existing facilities of the nursing home structure be allowed to develop as SPCA intended, but no expansion on site, and (2) that the county search for more appropriate land on which a larger enterprise could be established in addition to the original site.
His idea, plus an emotional agreement to the compromise by applicant Hoyt, carried the day. Four supervisors approved this foot-in-the-door deal and only Chairman Schwartz and Supervisor Woodson opposed.
That last half-hour of the deliberations was riveting, the reverse of the BPOL issue’s embarrassing dogfight that involved erroneous votes and re-votes.
So the beat goes on in Stafford. No wonder that piddling questions like the recently discovered extra $5 million in the county treasure drew so many yawns.