Friday, August 27, 2010

It's The TOD Conspiracy

The latest poll asked the question, "When Reid Greenmun is declared legally insane, which conspiracy will he blame it on?" 65% thought the Virginia Beach Taxpayers Alliance (VBTA) Vice Chairman/Chairman of No Transportation will blame it on the TOD Conspiracy, 20% on La MEChA Conspiracy, and 15% on the Regionalist Conspiracy. A look at a few of his conspiracy theories:

1. TOD Conspiracy (65%) - Reid believes Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) is part of a massive Marxist conspiracy to change voting patterns, and have the government take control of our transportation and housing. Greenmun claims Karl Marx was the father of modern urban planning, thus inferring "urban = Marxist."

2. La MEChA Conspiracy (20%) - Reid believes Hispanic immigration is part of a conspiracy by radicals to break the Southwest off the United States as a new Latin American nation.

3. Regionalist Conspiracy (15%) - Reid claims Hampton Roads is actually at least three different regions, and that Virginia Beach and Chesapeake should break off to form their own seperate Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). (He'd prefer Virginia Beach alone, but we don't have the population for a MSA.) Of course, the irony is lost on him that he's doing the very thing he attacks Regionalists for: cobbling together an artificial MSA. The funny thing is that means the VBTA's allies across the city line would also need to gain control of the Chesapeake City Council.

4. Oceanfront Conspiracy (0%) - Reid has stated that the Resort Area is the center of corruption in Virginia Beach politics, and he admits he's opposed every Resort capital project except the seawall. At the heart of Messnerism-Greenmunism is a blind rage at the Oceanfront.

Will the VBTA wake up and dump that raging lunatic from their Board of Directors after the election?!?

Enough of that for now. By popular demand, I ask for your top choice in the Virginia Beach City Council At-Large field. A few questions strike me at this point:

1. How do Dave Redmond and Rita Sweet Bellitto avoid sounding like tweedledee and tweedledumb? If I was on one of their campaign staffs, I'd be pressing to roll out a bold signature initiative that would define my candidate in the public's eyes.

2. Given the VBTA circle f*#!, will any of their candidates (John Moss, Bill DeSteph, and Wally Erb) break out of single digits?

3. How high is James Cabiness' name recognition? 5 of the other 6 candidates have been on the ballot before, while Dave Redmond (the other novice) should raise enough cash to get his name out. Will Cabiness finish ahead of any of the VBTAers?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Realistically, Desteph will pump a ton of money into the race. He is pretty unpopular except with the Tea Party gang, but he wins if he tricks the mainstream (again).

Moss, Erb, Jackson & Cabiness have no hope whatsoever.

Belitto has some popularity, but wasn't a shining star on school board. She would not have been my pick for the open council seat, but I did not get a vote.

Redmond seems to be a pretty level-headed guy. He is my first choice.

Second vote: who knows??

Avenging Archangel said...

Moss, DeSteph, and Erb are three different flavors of s*#!.

As I've said before, I've never voted for Bellitto in any of the three times she's been on the ballot before. The silver lining if she wins is having a civil engineer on Council as we pursue LRT.

As a grassroots inclusionist, my obvious first vote is AAPAC-backed Jackson. In this top two wins contest, he could slip in if he plays his cards smart.

Were the election tomorrow, Redmond would be my second vote. If he does something to lose it, I'd take a serious look at Cabiness.

Anonymous said...

Cabiness is a nice guy but he isn't going to get his name out there effectively.

I agree with you on Moss/DeSteph/Erb. I would go with Redmond and either Belitto or Jackson.