Little did I realize that our Governor would get me riled up in the meantime. I have started to call him tRumpkin; however, his real name of course is Younkin. So, what has Younkin (a.k.a. tRumpkin) been up to this past week to get me back to writing a political post again?
For one, tRumpkin is proposing stricter abortion rules in his new budget. All my readers know that even as a full-blooded male, I am fearlessly in favor of women’s right, and very pro-choice, or better in favor of allowing women to choose what to do to their own body. As you can see in this paragraph, I have written many posts on it and if you like to read more opinions of mine check these out. I will not go into it any further here.
There was another thing that our governor who seems to be completely out of touch with reality wants to do. According to tRumpkin and his Homebuilders’ Association cronies, there seems to be a shortage of affordable housing. Actually, I can somewhat agree with them this far. But now comes where we diverge. In his ultimate stupidity (he thinks it is wisdom) tRumpkin wants to ask/mandate the counties, cities, towns to open their rural areas to smaller lot sizes and thus allow denser development in these areas.
Rural areas around us typically allow lot sized of 3 acres (about 1.2 hectare) or larger. This would allow for the location of a septic system since these rural areas are typically not serviced by public sewer. Moreover, these large lots usually support larger homes that are built by more affluent folks, we often tend to call them MacMansions since they all tend to look somewhat alike or cookie cutter. I am sure that all these richer folks in their four- and five-bedroom homes will welcome a neighborhood with half or quarter acre lots and low to middle income folks nearby. Oh, and maybe some townhouses anyone and a dollar general which is the only place some of these folks can only afford to shop? I am not being disparaging, condescending, or facetious, but I can predict their reaction: “not in my back yard (NIMBY).” Younkin lives on a private 30 acre horse farm in Great Falls, Fairfax County, Virginia. I am sure he will subdivide his land and make it available for the construction of low-income housing.
In addition to this tRumpkin proposed to make all this development a bit easier by relaxing the wetland and other environmental regulations. He saw this one correctly, I teach in my classes that all the easy-to-develop land has already been taken, and the remaining land has issues. It either has horrible soils and cannot infiltrate water and is unsuitable for septic and stormwater management, or is a wetland, you name it, it has issues. So, let’s build these lower income neighborhoods in or near wetland areas or other marginal areas. Wetland areas flood more frequently, who cares a little mold won’t kill them, and if they get sick, that is what we have the emergency rooms for or the 24 hour clinics down in the strip malls. The folks in the MacMansions live high and dry and if something happens to them, God forbid, they have insurance, and the government will bail them out.
Furthermore, let’s not talk about paving over nature in the age of climate change, biodiversity loss, and other environmental disasters (boy, I already wrote about this in 2015). Let’s all migrate to the countryside and pave it over. tRumpkin’s proposal is going to make this all worse. Abandon the inner-city, instead of redeveloping it and making it more livable. More livable inner cities like in Europe would attract younger folks from all walks of life as well as lower income folks. This would work, as long as we make them livable and erase the food deserts that exist in many of our inner cities.
No, Governor Glenn Younkin you are out of touch with reality while living your sheltered life on your 30-acre horse farm. I am sorry, but you are not a man of the people, you are a conservative elite who has never worked a decent job in his life. I want to bet that you do not even know the price of a gallon of milk, a loaf of bread or a bale of hay for your horses.
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| This red oak grows in the Colonial Battlefield National Park. It is one of the stately trees grows in a grove. It is actually one of the smaller ones, but what impressed me on the morning I took this picture was the shadows on the trunk that shows the live veins which are a sign of advanced age or development. Thank goodness, Glenn Younkin's proposals cannot harm this grove; however, if it depends on him, these trees would go to the lumber mill or worse the paper plant and the area would become another subdivision. |
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