Roanoke Tea Party

I won’t be able to attend the county Board Meeting as I will be doing an ICLEI presentation for the Rockbridge County Tea Party Tuesday night. We haven’t been talking specifically about ICLEI and Agenda 21 much lately. But rest assured, once the windmill vote occurs tomorrow at the Roanoke Board of Supervisors meeting, we will be back after the ICLEI/Agenda 21 issue with a vengeance. If you aren’t familiar with the ICLEI/Agenda 21 issue the video on top of this post is a good short primer.

Click this link for a very balanced report on tomorrow’s windmill vote.  Watch the video and see the Wind Energy Blows logo getting some local exposure. Great job Greg!

Interesting that the Roanoke Tea Party is the greenest organization as we recycle old signs. But we are aligned with other environmental groups that people wouldn’t perceive we would align with. Those folks, which feature prominently in the video, are rightly concerned about the ecological impact of the project. The Sierra Club is violating their own rules by supporting this as they are supposed to oppose industrial project within sight of ecological treasures. The proposed site the county is dancing around (by saying it is just an ordinance vote) would be in full view of the Blue Ridge Parkway. Not to mention the fact that builders will need to strip the top of the mountain and pore tons of concrete to anchor these beasts. Doesn’t sound very “green” does it?

Several Sierra Club club members and other environmentalists oppose this project.

Not to mention, a windmill project is a supreme waste of resources (as they are wiildly inefficient) dangerous (they catch fire, kill birds etc) and funded primarily with your tax money (stimulus money at work). The county has a duty to vote no on this ordinance and protect the property rights of nearby residents and the county as a whole. If they vote yes, that ordinance needs serious revision including moving the setbacks to 1 mile and strengthening the bond requirements (which are a joke in their current form).

Follow up on yesterday’s post.

Got a good deal of feedback on the criticism of Dave Nutter’s campaign tactics. I did find out that Dave was conducting a door to door campaign and he and others hit 500 houses Saturday. That is fantastic. But there were 10s of thousands of people at Olde Salem Days and thousands of those folks are from his district. The local GOP did a good job of getting a table and actively put information out on other candidates….it would have just cost Dave the price of literature, signs and stickers to have the eager GOP volunteers hand out his stuff. And if our little organization can afford a table surely Dave’s campaign could have too?

One would hope that in the future, Dave will do a better job of coordinating with the Roanoke area GOP faithful so they don’t get beaten in Roanoke again like they did against a tea party backed primary candidate with a fraction of the resources of John Edwards.

As I wrote yesterday, Dave has a tough fight to take out the entrenched and loathsome political beast that is John Edwards. That has been our focus for a year and we have often carried that banner alone, as the former city GOP leadership (Chris Walters and John Brill are trying to change this) did NOTHING to push back against Edwards.

Dave has taken up that banner and he will need to fight like he’s never fought before to beat Edwards. I pray he is up to the challenge. I leave you with exhibit A in the why John Edwards needs to retire. The YouTube video of his performance on lobby day last year where he admits to not reading the budget bill before voting on it…and other ridiculous statements.