NEW TACTIC BY

WASHINGTON POST,

DEVELOPERS, AND

ASSORTED SPECIAL

INTERESTS:

PUSH MASSIVE

OVERDEVELOPMENT

AS AN

ECONOMIC ISSUE

I'll have to tell you about the brief interruption to this blog over the weekend later. Interesting story.

Right now, we need to get out in front of this new tactic being pushed by developers and special interests in the District 4 County Council special election: Namely that overdevelopment is good for you. And that slowed development (caused by the economy, certainly not the county's pro-developer policies) is causing the local economic crisis - not the county executive and council's failed fiscal policies and mismanagement.

The failing Washington Post has come out swinging on behalf of this bizarro-world talking point. Besides further damaging its collapsing ethical standards by declining to endorse a candidate in the Republican primary(!!!) - the most childish action I've witnessed from a major metropolitan media outlet in some time - it used overdramatic language to redefine politics in Montgomery County:

The Post said that those who oppose the status quo (overdevelopment on the mixed-use Bethesda Row/Rockville Town Center model, excessive spending and taxation, incompetent leadership, no solutions to transportation gridlock, constructing buildings to help the environment[?!]) are "anti-development zealots" (!!) who are therefore to be barred entirely from elected office. (By the way, did anyone else catch that line where the Post's anonymous editors said that Lou August and Andrew Padula had no experience in county government? Strange, because the developer they endorsed - Ben Kramer - has no experience in county government either!! So what is the point of that statement?)

Furthermore, no experience is required to hold elected office. Read the rules, Washington Post!

I'm sure the various boards of trade and chambers of commerce that really run things around here enjoyed the editorial.

But those of us trying to live in this county, and who have different priorities such as safer neighborhoods, fiscal responsibility, and a cleaner environment, are simply bewildered by Stone Age economics, environmental hypocrisy, and 1960s transportation plans.