especially when the project gets out of control and ends up costings a lot more money. Well, at least it will be transit. Normally local governments end up paying for stadiums, so I guess I should be grateful for that.

State government, VDOT, Kaine, and our Reps in Congress.  In fact, I suspect Kaine could have made the tunnel a possibility in a fairly painless way had he wanted to.

Fairfax county was between a rock and a hard place on this one - voting it down would have at least delayed the entire thing for years.

I guess what I really want to know is how we ended up in a situation where the county was handed this thing as a fait accompli.

"Unfortunately, support for the tunnel came after preliminary plans were submitted and the Federal Transit Administration had agreed to provide $900 million for the elevated track, at the encouragement of Virginia Congressmen Tom Davis and Frank Wolf."

http://www.planetize...

See also:

http://www.connectio...

why our Congress-critters aren't seeking a legislative solution, esp. friggen' Tom Davis and Frank Wolf. 

This was another one of those Tom Davis things. No doubt nothing more than his usual mode of using his position to give his friends lucative no-bid contracts. Bechtel is one of those Republican friends. They didn't do so well in Mass. digging underground so I guess they thought they'd better stay above ground for a while.

By the way, I've read that Bectel is a very corrupt company. -Just something I read. Doesn't have to be true.

Open Secrets on Bectel here:  http://www.opensecre...

CorpWatch on Bectel here:  http://www.corpwatch...

To top it off I just read that Davis is threatening to go after Valerie Plame (Legally I mean). Geeezzzzzz.... Do you think he will ever realize his party is unpopular right now?

The remark about plenty of "blame to go around" reminds me what I eventually learned from my subordinates when I was a project engineer/project manager of multi-million dollar Navy projects(really, had to re-learn because I'd gotten to the point in my career that I thought I knew more than they did). What they managed to make me understand is that placement of blame is not a productive excercise. What is productive is for all involved is to work together to produce a "Lessons Learned" after-action document that revealed what we did wrong and what we could do differently to avoid  the mistakes and problems on the next project.

That philosphy of project management, which really means people management, totally depends on team members' willingness to accept the fact that they and their team mates had contributed to project problems in some large or small ways.

Back to my original and basic premise: Placement of blame is not a productive exercise. Causing ourselves and our team mates who have the same common goal (defeat the enemy by electing our good people) to learn from our mistakes and failures is the reason that we can and will take back our state and our country.

In a little different context, but I think a good analogy, I want to relate to you a very profound principle I learned from my very closest friend and technical advisor when I was managing the aformentioned projects. I always called him "Brother Dave" (he's a lifelong Dem. who lives in Smithfield, Norfolk VA Tidewater area, and Susan Mariner knows his name). What Brother Dave taught me is that when we tested new electronics communications systems (now called IT sytems) and never had a failure it was a bad thing, not a good thing. He explained (the obvious) that the only thing we learn from 100% success is that that we don't know yet what will cause the inevitable failure and therefore can't yet diagnose it and find a way to fix the flaw. So it is with human failures. If we never see a failure (even when it occurs and we don't or won't see it) then we can't learn how to improve how we do things or correct our mistakes.

Please think about what I've said and try to move from blaming someone, especially yourself, for less than perfect results but rather try to help us all to learn from our past exeperiences so we may do even better in reaching our goals .... Take Back Virginia... Make Virginia Blue Again.

  T.C.

"Lessons learned" may be: don't put crooks in charge of your money, and replace the crooks who are in charge.

It's funny how candidates say they believe "personal accountability" is appropriate for everyone, except it seems for those who have incorporated or have been sworn in to public office.

if it is me or my friends, then accountability is just pure vindictiveness; just ask Libby and his supporters if I am right or not. ;)

They could have changed their vote for a tunnel as the locally preferred alternative but they didn't. Kaine was only supporting what they supported and he challenged them to change their preference. The BoS didn't. Mark my words,  watch Connolly's (and the other supervisor's being challenged this November) campaign coffers swell.

This was a decision by this Board. The buck stops there. The nay votes were only a show - they wouldn't have happened if the fate of the EL was really on the line.

I don't believe for a moment that Fairfax County would have lost its funding if this BoS had had the chutzpah to vote down the EL. This same doomday senario was expounded to the Herndon Town Council in 2004 then they voted down the Fairfax western tax district. They voted against the tax district and the $900K money wasn't lost nor was the County's place in line for the funding. It's all a ruse.

Our Congressmen are going to make sure that Fairfax gets its rail, tunnel or no. The blame for this EL fiasco lies squarely on the shoulders of Connolly and the bargains he has made with Tysons landowners and the construction  consortium. I'm sure his employer figures prominently in here somewhere, as well.