Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Virginia General Assembly, 2011

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The entire Virginia General Assembly stands for election this year, including all 40 seats in the Virginia Senate and all 100 seats in the Virginia House of Delegates. The General Assembly was established by British colonists at Jamestown in 1619 as the House of Burgesses, which moved to Williamsburg in 1699. It became the General Assembly along with American independence in 1776 and then moved to Richmond in 1780, where it remains today. The Virginia General Assembly is the oldest extant legislative body in the western hemisphere. House members serve two-year terms and Senate members serve four-year terms, offset by two years with the gubernatorial elections.

Virginia Senate, 13th District

Note: since the 2007 Virginia Senate elections, I have moved from the 33rd Senate District to the 13th Senate District.

In the race to represent the 13th District in the Virginia Senate, Dick Black (R) and Shawn Mitchell (D) are vying for an open seat. The 13th District encompasses the bulk of Loudoun County (excluding Leesburg, Dulles Airport, and the south-western quadrant) as well as an area of northern Prince William County. This area includes Manassas Battlefield, South Riding, Gilbert’s Corner, Broadlands, Purcellville, Hamilton, Lovettsville, and part of Ashburn.

Black, a former member of the Virginia House of Delegates representing the 32nd District for four terms (eight years), is campaigning primarily on his legislative record—and with good reason. As a member of the House, Black was consistently pro-business (good for the economy) and pro-liberty (good for the citizens). During his time there he never voted for any of the unnecessary tax increases proposed by our government, consistently supported economically beneficial ‘right to work’ laws, and was an ardent supporter of citizens’ basic civil liberties—including our right to life (the foundation all other rights are based on) and the right to keep and bear arms (the guarantor of all other rights). These two cornerstones of human liberty are often ignored by those who call themselves civil libertarians. Finally, Black fought hard to bring desperately-needed transportation funding to northern Virginia.

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Loudoun County Local Offices, 2011

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Note: Since the 2007 local government elections, I have moved from the Hunter Mill District of Fairfax County, Virginia, to the Dulles District of Loudoun County, Virginia.

Many, many, many local offices are up for election this year in Loudoun County. We will be voting for the Board of Supervisors (Chairman and District), the School Board (At-Large and District), the Commonwealth’s Attorney, the Sheriff, the Commissioner of Revenue, the Treasurer, and the Soil and Water Conservation District Board of Directors. While they lack the glamour of federal (or even state) offices, these elections are very important and have a significant impact on local quality of life.

Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, Chairman (At-Large)

In the race for Chairman of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors (at-large), incumbent Scott York (R) faces off against challenger Tom Bellanca (D). York has been Chairman since 2000 and is seeking a fourth four-year term.

Loudoun County is a unique place. The eastern half of the county is quickly developing into a bustling, vibrant suburb of Washington, DC, while the western half remains a picturesque rural area dotted with farms and wineries. Our Board of Supervisors is faced with the difficult task of balancing the needs of these disparate areas. They must support growth and investment, while also representing the needs of the county’s more rural areas and ensuring that urban sprawl does not out-pace infrastructure and road development.

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Loudoun County Bond Referendums, 2011

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Virginia county governments are required to put bond issuance to a voter referendum in order to borrow money on behalf of the county. Bond issuance is usually used by governments to raise money for large capital expenditures, and those bonds are repaid to their purchasers at a later date (plus interest). Bond referendums in Virginia almost always pass by a large margin, in large part because people think they are voting in favor of the agencies that will benefit (after all, who wants to vote ‘against’ schools, parks, or transportation?). Many voters do not realize that bond issuance contributes to government debt and should be used sparingly.

Acquisition of Fire and Rescue Apparatus

Citizens of Loudoun County, Virginia, will be asked through a bond referendum to authorize the Board of Supervisors to borrow up to 3 million dollars to finance, in whole or in part, new fire and rescue apparatus.

According to the United States Census, Loudoun County’s population grew faster than any other county in the United States over the last ten years. We are also an incredibly diverse county; our over-300,000 citizens live in everything from country villas to urban apartments to immigrant tenements to rural farm houses to planned communities. The eastern half of the county is rapidly developing into an extended suburb of Washington, DC, peppered with dense residential communities and imposing office buildings. The western half maintains a distinctly rural character, and is instead punctuated with farms and wineries. On our eastern border, only thirty minutes from downtown Washington (traffic permitting), is Washington Dulles International Airport. On our western border, nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains, you’ll find the Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center—an emergency ‘continuity of government’ facility operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) where much of the U.S. Congress was evacuated during the 9/11/2001 attacks. On our northern border you’ll find the Potomac River. We have eight-lane freeways and one-lane bridges. We have huge forests and huge office parks.

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Random Photos

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In the midst of a bunch of serious works of time-consuming writing, here are a bunch of random photos I’ve taken over the last month or two on my phone. My favorite is the derelict hat, left sitting on a highway, that the always-impressive professionals at the Virginia Department of Transportation simply painted right over instead of, you know, picking it up and throwing it away.

To Kill the Killer

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It has been a while since I have discussed the subject of capital punishment on this site. Indeed, my only piece of writing dealing solely with the subject is an 11th Grade English paper titled “Thou Shalt Not Kill“—coincidentally, the oldest piece of content still present on this site. If you go read it, please bear in mind that it doesn’t exactly reflect my opinions today (though it does come pretty close), and I was a much worse writer back then.

There have been a few passing mentions in the mean time, but in general I’ve been pretty quiet on the subject. In light of yesterday’s execution of Troy Davis in Georgia, which has proved quite controversial, I figured it was time to finally give capital punishment the full Off on a Tangent treatment. This subject is one where I have basically always found myself at-odds with my fellow conservatives. While right-wing politicos are usually the loudest supporters of the death penalty, I have always found it distasteful.

Our legal system is predicated on the idea that it is better for ten guilty persons to go free than to convict one innocent. This is why so many prominent accused criminals—O.J. Simpson and Cacey Anthony, for example—are acquitted when the evidence against them seems overwhelming. Even so, our courts do convict innocent people from time-to-time. Often they are exonerated later, though I am sure that sometimes they are not. That this will happen occasionally is inevitable, though we must do everything we can to prevent it. When it does happen and the error is discovered, the victim of that miscarriage of justice must be set free and generously compensated for their unjust hardship. We can, and must, always set these errors right.

But when the innocent has been put to death, they cannot be set free. The dead cannot be compensated by the government for their troubles. The punishment is permanent. This is the primary reason that I have always opposed the death penalty: the risk, however remote, of killing an innocent far outweighs any potential benefit to the victims of crime or for the society.

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Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.