Open Thread………………Earth Day……………………..Monday, April 22

MoonHowler

NASAEarth_EN-US296696069Light pollution or progress?  It’s all relative.  If you consider North Korea, the lack of night light represents an impoverished, backward culture.  If you are speaking of Las Vegas, the light represents waste,  opulence, and wealth.

Many folks have no where to sky-watch because of city lights.  The entire east coast suffers from light pollution.  Going to the country around here isn’t looking at the night sky like you would see in Montana or New Mexico.   Still, it’s far superior to in-town.

I challenge the supervisors to designate one of the western parks like Silver Lake as a sky watch park during celestial events.  It would cost a park ranger on those nights, that’s all.

PWC to slash jail drug program: more stupid is as stupid does

MoonHowler

drug free

Last week in order to prove their tea party cred, apparently, the PWC BOCS proposed slashing the county DORM  (Drug Offender Rehabilitation Module), program, a drug treatment program for incarcerated criminals.  Jeremy Borden reported the following in washingtonpost.com:

Prince William County officials are considering cutting local funding for the county jail’s substance abuse treatment program, a move that has touched off intense lobbying from defense attorneys and law enforcement officials who say the program helps inmates clean up their lives, keeps the community safer and saves money.

Although county supervisors don’t make any final budget decisions until a scheduled meeting Tuesday, a potential $607,000-per-year cut to the program took many by surprise last week. Supervisors had considered other potentially painful cuts, including doing away with two new libraries and slashing the local subsidy to the county health department.

The board already has decided to spare the libraries and health department, but the proposed cut to the substance abuse program remained as supervisors sought a compromise to whittle residents’ real estate tax bills while maintaining core services. Those negotiations have yielded a plan that would have the average county resident paying $3,392 in real estate taxes, an increase of 2.3 percent.

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