Doubtless you have read the media reports throughout the past week that Virginia Beach Mayor Will Sessoms may have voted on an occasional easement to some property that may have at one time been financed by Towne Banke, the employer of the Mayor. In Virginia Beach, this is what counts as a scandal.
Couple that with the recent endorsements of Democrats Terry McAuliffe and Mark Warner by Sessoms, and quite a few Republicans are willing to forget that the press hates us and cheer the media attacks.
It’s almost hilarious. The press coddles Democrats six days a week and twice on Sunday, but the one time they do something conservatives like, we link to their articles quicker than a house of blue lights finds lonely guys.
The rumor mill is rampant in Virginia Beach. Not an hour passed last week without someone calling me to tell me that “the Feds” are looking into all this.
Not that the Feds would be telling these people what their plans are…..
I do know one thing. If the Feds have nothing better to do but investigate easements and setbacks voted on in unanimous votes in Virginia Beach, I’m scared to death that we’re going to be victims of a big terror attack soon. Someone in DC doesn’t have their priorities straight.
But to hear conservatives cheering the possibility of a large, intrusive federal government is what really has me scratching my head. I guess there are some parts of “big government” the Tea Party doesn’t mind.
The saddest part is hearing the reporter being interviewed saying there is much more to come, but he can’t say just yet. Withholding evidence is usually considered a bad thing, but for a newspaper that sat on this story for days until Ed Gillespie conceded and Mark Warner was the winner, I’m not expecting fairness from the press.
What? How dare I? It’s a mere coincidence that the story was held until Gillespie conceded, you say? Like the newspaper, I assume it was deliberate. I can’t prove it, but they can’t prove the allegations they printed about Sessoms either. Just coincidences.
And there are rumors abounding that a certain City Councilman is going to announce that he thinks the Mayor should resign. Since this Councilman ran against the Mayor and got beaten, no one is really surprised by the possibility of this.
And the “rule of law” conservatives who oppose Sessoms will cheer the end of due process and the principle of “innocent until proven guilty” by applauding anything other than the Mayor staying in office basically because the newspaper accused him of things that haven’t been proven.
I’m not sure where this is all headed, since the Commonwealth’s Attorney has asked a special prosecutor look into it. But I do know a few things:
Towne Bank put Sessoms on paid leave during the investigation, and Sessoms stepped down from his Board position. Mayors of Norfolk and Suffolk stepped down, too, without any accusations against them at all.
Most, if not all, of the votes the press has focused on were unanimous votes. Sessoms abstained from a lot of votes since 2009. Sessoms says he didn’t knowingly have a conflict on the things he voted for, and since those things were clearly going to pass no matter what Sessoms did, doesn’t that support his statement that he didn’t know? Why would he knowingly vote on items that he had a conflict on when his vote didn’t matter in the least? Who would take that risk?
The McDonnell trial proves that today’s federal government can make anything seem criminal if they wanted to. Heck, when I see City Councilmen vote on budgets that fund teacher salaries while their wives are teachers, I wonder how that isn’t a conflict. It’s certainly a more direct connection than being assigned as a trustee to a loan to an LLC and having absolutely no contact with the borrower ever.
At the very least, I hope we can agree as conservatives that the process should be allowed to take its course, the press is never on our side and we shouldn’t be fooled into thinking otherwise, and we should calm down all the rhetoric until we know if the Mayor is convicted of anything.
Heck, he hasn’t even been accused yet, and some want his head on a platter.
Slow down, folks. The truth will come out, and it won’t be the press who tells it.
