NOVATOWNHALL

In Sterling, apparently.

A story circulating in Sterling the past year is the Loudoun County government has cast a blind eye to many instances of squatting; specifically, when a house is foreclosed and everyone is evicted, little by little people show back up and occupy the residence. Sometimes it’s by entering through a rear entrance, sometimes former tenants of these boarding houses still having keys and going in through the front door, usually a strictly nocturnal phenomenon. People have even been seen sleeping on roofs at night, but by morning the houses are empty again.

Complaints to Loudoun County Zoning Administration, needless to say, have resulted in no action.

Well, the new trend we are heralding here at the NOVA TownHall Blog is to transform anecdotes into documented reality, and with evidence coming in from around the community and my own observations from the front driveway, we will continue that trend right here.

Exhibit One: House A from our June 23 post. You know, the one across the street from my house which Loudoun County Zoning assured us idiot citizens was perfectly above-board: “A family of six and two unrelateds” - no reason to inspect.

Well tonight, someone shows up and occupies House A which was supposedly foreclosed and all the boarders evicted from.

There are some lingering bad feelings about this particular residence, mainly because the voluminous collection of refuse in the back yard is still there: thirty to fifty bags of garbage a variety of junkyard-style trash in the yard and the back deck piled with refuse. When the car arrived, neighbors called the police tonight and five Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office cruisers showed up, deputies surrounded the house, knocked on the doors, but whoever was inside did not open up. No warrant, so no authorization to enter.

But let’s hand it to our Sheriff’s Office: they knew the resolution of the June situation and that the house was supposed to be empty, and they did all they could - at the present time. That’s the plus side. The minus side is we still have a festering landfill right here and our government entities are apparently powerless to do anything about it - a situation that could have been entirely avoided if our zoning enforcement officer had done what obviously needed to be done about two months ago when the first complaint was filed!

Thank you, Terry Wharton. I am sure someone, somewhere, is pleased that this property owner like so many others in Sterling was given a free pass.

Alas, we’re not the only ones with a problem caused by a broken Zoning Administration division. This is 504 W. Beech (I will make no attempt to protect anyone’s privacy because this one is so egregious):

The house on the right is 504. Neighbors complained about a boarding house being run from this location for well over a year, and the house was foreclosed several months ago, yet it remained occupied. Neighbors continued to complain to no avail. When the tenants finally left they cleaned the place out, from the major appliances to cabinets to doors to the garage doors.

The house to the left of it has a For Sale sign on it - has been on the market for quite a while. Too bad for them, eh? Laws on the books are not enforced, and the law-abiding citizens of Sterling (who I am convinced our county government considers first-class “chumps”) consequently get hosed.

Yes, even windows were removed. A resident of this court said they watched all this happening, reported it to the appropriate agencies in Leesburg, and were ignored.

It gets worse. There is another specific case going on right now which may be far more revealing than either of these, because evidence is piling up about a home purchasing mortgage-and-refinancing scam which might explain much of what has been happening in our area. It appears some of these boarding houses have been the result of a loophole in lending practices, in which someone can buy multiple residences, sell and refinance them several times over, then leave with a wad of cash and sticking the lending institutions with the bill. In the lag time between purchase and physical foreclosure, the residence is rented out to illegal boarders, and the rent money kept as additional profit. Banks, and eventually taxpayers, are left to pick up the final bills.

More to come - I expect MUCH more - on that matter. The Loudoun County government, in particular the Zoning Administration division and possibly the Commonwealth Attorney’s Office and some other departments, definitely has some ’splainin’ to do, if you ask me.

UPDATE: A group of Loudoun citizens met tonight to discuss these and other issues, and the consensus was we really need to find out whether any of the members of our Board of Supervisors - beside Eugene Delgaudio - is even conscious of what is happening here. The violations would not likely be allowed to stand if they were occurring anywhere other than in Sterling.

Something is very fishy in our county government, folks. I sense a groundswell of outrage from the citizens in eastern Loudoun.

UPDATE: The car in front of House A was gone by 6:30 the next morning, and did not return last night. Yesterday afternoon someone looked in the backyard and said the gate was open and it was relatively clean, so thank goodness for the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office! Even though they would not have had to be there if Zoning had done its job in the first place, our deputies do get results just by maintaining a presence. UPDATE II: Another neighbor informs me the bags of trash had been removed over a week ago so all that was back there when the deputies came was junk like car seat, wire spool, miscellaneous construction-related trash.

Found in a Freep post: It is reported in a Spanish-language paper that both John McCain and Barack Obama told the NALEO Conference audience they would push for comprehensive immigration reform before the 100th day of their presidency.

I imagine no one has fallen off their chair from learning this.

But don’t plan that Election Day fishing trip before reading this article on the impact each candidate will likely have on the Supreme Court.

This is truly a first. Our congress is less popular than used car salesmen, dog catchers and arch villains that tie beautiful damsels to the train tracks. People prefer bad breath to congress. OK, maybe not bad breath, but the following does tell an incredible story …

HMO’s are more popular than congress. You know those guys who in the movies leave grandma on a gurney outside the hospital to die? Yeah, those guys are more popular than our elected officials. According to Henniger at the Wall Street Journal

At the bottom of the heap, displacing HMOs as our worst institution, one finds the second branch of government, our Congress, at 12%. The Gallup folks noted it is “the worst rating Gallup has measured for any institution in the 35-year history of this question.” Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, come on down! You’ve made history.

Congress has become a bad joke. With 74% of the American people wanting us to drill for oil domestically, what does Nancy Pelosi say in response to $4 a gallon gas?

It’s an energy policy “literally written by the oil industry - give away more public resources,” declared House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California.

OK Nancy darling, who is going to drill for the stuff OTHER than oil companies? Do you want to start a government program to do this, nationalizing the oil industry perhaps? Some Democrats have called for this from the floor of the house. Is that where you are going?

There is nothing a Democrat hates worse than an American company being able to make money while helping the American public with a crisis. When there is a crisis, money must be lost and the government has to do the helping, unless it is a Republican president in office, then of course nothing can go right. Speaking of presidents, Bush, our buffoon in chief, is more than TWICE as popular than congress. This is remarkable as the president has managed to alienate just about everyone in the country except … well … hmmm. It is remarkable! At 12% the odds are that many of the mothers of those in congress think they are doing a lousy job.

Some of the other groups that score worse than the president are Unions and the Mainstream Media. Considering that congress, Unions, and MSM are the big three of the modern left, is it possible that mood of the country reflects a desire for a truly conservative alternative? I wonder how well the likes of MoveOn.org would score?

The people at the top of the heap are the military, despite it’s involvement in Iraq and the MSM policy of only bad news from Iraq is fit to print, or, report. Then comes small business, the police and organized religion. All the above are conservative entities. Considering the publics current distaste for Republicans it is becoming clear that the party is no longer associated by the public at large with conservative principles. It appears that the country is seeking a conservative response to the socialistic instincts of the modern Democrat party.

It is obvious they are not seeing this response in the modern Republican party.

You know if this were a Republican, this would be receiving round-the-clock coverage. From Citizens Against Government Waste:

Washington, D.C. - Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today named Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) its June Porker of the Month for accepting a preferential mortgage deal from a company which stands to benefit from a mortgage bailout bill he is pushing through Congress.

Read it all.

[After you read the following, you can find more on this topic at this post, a week later]

This is what “blight” looks like from the house across the street, and this is how it is allowed to happen. (click on photos for larger images)

For all of you who don’t have firsthand familiarity with the illegal alien problem in Northern Virginia, let me share a true-life story which might help paint the picture of what has been happening here in Sterling for the past five to seven years. In sum, I believe segments of our government at every level are at war with the legal residents of our nation, an economic war conducted on behalf of powerful business interests, a war that most citizens don’t even realize has already been declared on them.

I am going to relate this tale about Sterling to demonstrate what has gone wrong at the micro level - because the macro-level issues have been so thoroughly politicized that most people who are not on the front lines can’t make heads or tails of the controversy. Facts about border security and what the federal government is or isn’t doing are remote and opaque. Facts about what is happening at the neighborhood level are much easier to grasp.

In most American communities, where the rubber hits the road on the illegal immigration problem lies in the actions of three local government functions: Public safety, business licensing and zoning enforcement. We have covered the first two in substantial depth on this blog over the years (check here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) We’ve touched on zoning, but it is time to probe a little further.

When we turn over this particular log, as most Sterling residents know and which was amply testified to at the May 14 community meeting, the reality is not pretty. Both the Sheriff’s Office and the Zoning Administration division received abysmally low grades from local residents.

This was no major surprise to me.

From my personal experience with filing zoning violation complaints in Loudoun County for the past two-plus years, I believe the Zoning Administration division of the Department of Building and Development is worse than ineffective. From my vantage point, I believe this particular section of the county government is, like Robert Mugabe’s Ministry of Justice, “part of the problem.”

Read the rest of this entry »

[UPDATE: Dan Genz of the Examiner reports the crackdown won’t be all it’s cracked up to be or all that Sheriff Simpson requested. This does not bode too well for much change in eastern Loudoun.]

Loudoun County Sheriff Steve Simpson announced yesterday that the federal bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has approved the Loudoun Sheriff’s Office for participation in the federal 287(g) program, which provides authority and additional tools for local government agencies to enforce federal immigration laws.

It’s about time.

Help Save Loudoun presented a detailed proposal on the 287(g) program to the Loudoun Board of Supervisors in October, 2006.

NVTH readers may recall that the Sheriff’s changing stance on 287(g) was a controversial issue in the county last year. The Joseph Passarelli tragedy highlighted the spectacular failure of local law enforcement agencies, who had the illegal alien, hit-and-run driver in custody 23 times and let him go in every single instance. Let’s hope the new, formal relationship between our Sheriff’s Office and ICE will also lead to a reversal of what is perceived in Sterling to be a very hands-off approach to illegal aliens by local law enforcement.

The problem as we see it in Sterling appears as follows: Illegal aliens are a sticky wicket for certain local government agencies - specifically, the Sheriff’s Office and the Zoning Enforcement Team - to deal with, so representatives of those agencies routinely give illegal aliens a free pass for infractions that would land citizens in a heap of trouble. If you or I had a DUI incident, turned our residence into a boarding house or began running a construction-related subcontracting business out of our home, we would be spanked legally and financially in short order. Illegals, however, seem to get away with stuff like this all the time. At a “community meeting” a few weeks ago, that was the dominant complaint from the citizens - of ALL ethnic groups - who attended. What we want is for our Sheriff’s Office to apply the same rules to illegal aliens that apply to us, and the new agreement with ICE provides an opportunity for hope that infractions under the jurisdiction of the Sheriff’s Office will now be dealt with more effectively. (The Zoning Enforcement Team, alas, may be beyond hope, and that is a blog post for another day).

So let’s hope that the continual DUI infractions, assorted related crimes, and crimes of every sort will now begin to abate as the Sheriff’s Office takes a more proactive stance on apprehending and processing illegal aliens suspected of violations. When word gets out that Loudoun County is once more under the rule of law, our community may become a less attractive location for illegal migrant workers.

As reported in today’s New York Times, even the Bush administration has been taking a harder line on illegals which is nothing short of a miracle; so while we can’t expect him to be transformed into Sheriff Joe overnight, we should expect Sheriff Steve Simpson to instill a culture of enforcing the rule of law throughout his department.

In case any of our readers are not clued in about why it is important for local government agencies to have all the necessary tools and authority to apprehend illegal alien criminals rather then let them slip through the net, this seems as good a time as any for another illegal alien recent crime round-up. Most of these links, below the fold, are from our vigilant, esteemed reader Lynn.

Read the rest of this entry »

It is time to shut it down. Take back the property, cut off U.S. funding, and send them all back to where they came from.

A “UN Official” - whatever the hell that is, presumably someone who has graduated from merely raping children and now also knows how to put on a suit - is planning to visit Prince William county to investigate its efforts to crack down on the the presence of illegal aliens:

Jorge Bustamante, the United Nation’s special rapporteur on migrants’ rights, plans to tour Manassas and Woodbridge, receive briefings on local enforcement measures, and attempt to meet with local officials.

He contacted immigrant leaders in the county two months ago to begin preparing for a visit, saying he was interested in the landmark nature of the county’s actions.

Special rapporteurs are tasked with reviewing human-rights issues of international concern to raise political pressure and shape public opinion, but cannot issue sanctions.

BVBL has a worthwhile take on this issue. Be sure to read it all.

My take is, run the son of a bitch out of town on a rail. Maybe a big reaction from the citizens will catch on in other communities to initiate an effort to defund the useless, corrupt institution.

Good news, apparently. Prosecutions for identity theft on a large scale.

Now let’s sit tight and wait for an update on the prosecutions of the root perpetrators.

UPDATE: In the comments, Greg points us to this exhaustive background on the Postville immigration bust story. Yes, it is worse than you think.

Courtesy of reader and former Arizona resident Lynn is a pretty amazing story from former Tucson high school teacher John Ward, a Hispanic:

The basic theme of the curriculum was that Mexican-Americans were and continue to be victims of a racist American society driven by the interests of middle and upper-class whites.

In this narrative, whites are able to maintain their influence only if minorities are held down. Thus, social, political and economic events in America must be understood through this lens.

This biased and sole paradigm justified teaching that our community police officers are an extension of the white power structure and that they are the strongmen used “to keep minorities in their ghettos.”

It justified telling the class that there are fewer Mexican-Americans in Tucson Magnet High School’s advanced placement courses because their “white teachers” do not believe they are capable and do not want them to get ahead.

It justified teaching that the Southwestern United States was taken from Mexicans because of the insatiable greed of the Yankee who acquired his values from the corrupted ethos of Western civilization.

It was taught that the Southwest is “Atzlan,” the ancient homeland of the Aztecs, and still rightfully belongs to their descendants - to all people of indigenous Mexican heritage.

Read it all.

From the perspective of America’s legal residents, the essence of the illegal alien problem here is not who they are, but what they do. As in, they don’t follow the rules the rest of us follow (and our government at every level gives them a pass).

Whether it’s turning residences into boarding houses, bringing commercial vehicles onto our neighborhood streets, stealing identities or running businesses out of homes, the bottom line is illegal migration is a problem because of the illegals’ unwillingness to assimilate.

If the majority of them simply worked, lived in the neighborhoods, and played by the same rules as everyone else, there would be no problem. But the sheer number of illegals caused such an impact that by 2006 many, many previously unaffected neighborhoods suddenly were beset by an inflow of people whose agenda clearly was not to “become Americans.” Conveniently, in May of that year, these same people marched in our streets by the thousands under foreign flags demanding their “rights.”

The pro-illegal activists learned from the enormously negative reaction those marches provoked from America’s legal residents, and since then no public events of nearly comparable size have taken place and not a lot of Mexican flags have been seen on the TV news. But as Mr. Ward relates, there has been a movement active for years now to indoctrinate young people of foreign descent, some of whom are likely citizens, against assimilation. And it isn’t just in the high schools.

More here, here and here.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin wrote about this Thursday.

Our commenter Zimzo will be horrified at this: The Washington Post has joined a Jewish newspaper in furthering negative stereotypes with their impolitic naming of the religion of those accused in the Postville meat packing scandal.

Agriprocessors has been cited multiple times by federal and state regulators for food-safety, environmental, labor and animal cruelty violations. The violations were widely reported by a Jewish newspaper, the Forward, prompting Jewish advocacy groups to note that Jewish law protects workers and forbids inflicting unnecessary pain on animals.

So far, no officials from Agriprocessors have been charged in the immigration case. The company has been fined hundreds of thousands of dollars for labor and environmental charges in previous years, and it faced two recent meat recalls…

“How can those who are responsible for preparing religiously fit meat not conduct themselves in a religiously proper manner? It’s an embarrassment to the Jewish community — how can this be seen as Jewishly fit?” asked Henry Karp, a Reform rabbi in Davenport, Iowa. The word “kosher” in English means “fit.”

Last week’s affidavit filed by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement quoted unnamed informants alleging that Agriprocessors paid undocumented workers $5 an hour and underreported worker injuries. The informants also asserted that there was a methamphetamine lab in the plant and that weapons were either “traded for drugs or sold” on the premises. Agriprocessors declined to comment on the allegations but said it is cooperating with the government.

Shame on all of us. Some things should never be spoken, even by a Rabbi.