Through the course of several discussions surrounding Metro, former Delegate David Ramadan let the cat out of the bag that it was he who orchestrated the final vote to bring METRO to Loudoun County. David Ramadan has now admitted that it was he who foisted this mess onto Loudoun Taxpayers.
The following are direct quotes from David that appear on his Delegate David Ramadan FaceBook Page. It is the Post about him being banned by RPV. Please look it up for context as to the following excerpts and my comments below:
Ramadan:
“ Greg Stone Greg, he gave you a 1000+ words answer that actually is convincing to everyone but you and your circle of 10 who are obsessed w MATT & Metro even though none of you are his constituents.”
Me:
David it’s in the media every other day, on the agenda of two states, the District of Columbia and the Federal Government. The system is upside down. Do you read the papers?
Ramadan:
“Talking about intellectual honesty, how about you admit that the current Metro issues on hand have nothing to do w Metro coming to Loudoun. You keep conflating the issues; is it dishonesty or are you not getting it Greg. “
Me:
Ahhh David they call it the Metro System because it’s a system, it’s connected, it’s all part of a parent organization. The health and operational status of the system is the health and operational status of the Silver Line. The Silver Line or Metro to Loudoun is not a stand-alone entity. I am beginning to think you don’t know how this whole thing works.
Ramadan:
“And as for Loudoun, Metro so far has brought jobs before Loudoun even starts paying!? Now, you Metro opponents might end up in twenty years be right about Metro’s disadvantages vs Metro’s advantages to Loudoun, but that is far away and unknown —my bet is on advantages so stop patting yourself on the back since you haven’t proved crap yet.”
Me:
We are already right, don’t need 20 years. The system has been upside down for decades. Read Matt Letourneau’s own Op-Ed where that admission is made. You really need to do a modicum of research pertaining to this issue.
Ramadan:
“As for my intellectual honesty, you know better than to challenge it; as it is pure and superior: not only was I a cheerleader, but had a bigger role than you know. I engineered the deal that flipped the deciding vote. How’s that for honesty and superiority my friend!?!? ”
Me:
I can’t believe you would actually admit to this. After everything that has transpired you are admitting to the world you orchestrated the biggest political and financial blunder in LOCO history. ”
There you have it LOCO it was then Delegate David Ramadan screwed you for years to come.
The two big takeaways are:
1. If true, David Ramadan was key in foisting upon our County the worst financial decision ever made in LOCO politics. Period!
2. David refers to himself as Pure and Superior. It is this attitude and self admiration that gave us number 1 above. These personality traits go hand in hand with really bad decisions. Now, do you see how we got this Boondoggle?
If I were David Ramadan, I would be ashamed and embarrassed to no end.
And BTW who in the hell describes themselves as “pure and superior” you have a major hubris issue my friend. You might want to get that checked out.
30 comments
I guess Ken Reid could clarify the assertion on “engineering”. Regardless, as we look back on what happened – let’s also be in the present and look to how the state/counties are going to afford this. Actually, they really can’t afford it, so maybe it is “how are we going to pay for this?”. I hope everyone is listening to Delegate Larock’s solution he is putting forward. It would make a great follow-up to this piece.
We will be paying on this Metro mess for eternity. Long term there are possibilities for reform – and anyone that is following Congresswoman Comstock’s work knows that it is a complicated slog but possible. Let’s deal with the short term and AVOID statewide taxes in doing so. To me that is the height of laziness – asking the Legislature to bail out Loudoun by raising taxes on the entire state. Let’s get serious folks!
We Republicans seem to have a blind spot as to the interconnectedness of things and the consequences of votes.
Every elected official casting a vote should be asking themselves… ‘And then what?’
Loudoun Today is the result of the votes/actions of Loudoun Yesterday and sticks the consequences to Loudoun Tomorrow.
And now what?
Its WAY too late to be complaining about this now.
The stations are under construction and the mountain of developments that will bring an additional 50k+ people to eastern Loudoun have already been approved.
In 10 years every square foot of undeveloped land in eastern Loudoun will be either a mixed use development or a data center. Enjoy everyone!
Paging Ken Reid, paging Ken Reid….
Metro just keeps getting weirder and weirder (and worse and worse).
I’m with Rocinante. “Engineered deal”?? Oh, do tell.
Metro ridership is down 12%. It’s too slow and too expensive. Imagine spending an hour and half on the metro from Ashburn to downtown, with nothing to eat or drink and no bathrooms. Who will do that when they can drive a car, or board a bus with their coffee and breakfast, and a bathroom, and get to their office in the half the time of metro at half the cost. Traffic will go from bad to worse as it always does around Metro stations but the developers will be happy.
One might ask why the fastest growing, and richest, county in the nation needs more development? The answer is, Loudoun does not need more growth with the demand for more schools, more firehouses, more police and even worse traffic.
The GA and the Governor have given away our money for roads to throw it at the sinkhole that is metro which means our roads get worse and worse with ever more traffic.
Thanks Metro! Thanks David Ramadan!
Funny there is a reason David Ramadan drop out of the House of Delegate?
Why, Why isn’t someone doing a deep dive on this.
Something smells about Ramadan
Very disturbing. Money money money. I think David has his head in the ground regarding voter sentiment on this. The Silver Line vote was a travesty, a fraud against Loudoun taxpayers. Not only will it hurt us by increasing density, property taxes are going to increase, traffic will increase, crime will increase (as it does with density) and Democrats (thus racism, immoral social agendas, and intolerance) will increase. Shameful.
Racism will increase because of Democrats?
Is this really a question? When a party so thoroughly embraces racism and saturates its own policy preferences way of viewing the world and dealing with people with it, how could it be any other way? From immigration to hyphenation to tokenization to education to employment to making people vulnerable and in many other ways, the Democrat Party is and always been the Party of Racism and the Party whose strategy is to stay on top by dividing and demeaning certain people groups, in some cases while pretending to help and care for them.
What jobs are David Ramadan referring to? I was unaware the Silver Line was bringing numerous jobs to Loudoun County.
Right. I’d like to see data to back this up. I admit some companies will select a location due to proximity to Metro – BUT – this is where you and I remember the Fuller report – there is no data to show us what would have happened it metro didn’t come in to Loudoun for 2 stops. It’s not mud huts vs extreme wealth – which is what Fuller warned. And certain supervisors bought into this crap! It is just common sense that a municipality 30 minutes from DC will continue to have growth. Anyone that grew up in this area or understands growth knows this. We don’t need help growing, we need to manage it and encourage the right kind of growth.
Loudoun doesn’t need jobs. Our unemployment rate is 3%, in Leesburg it’s 2.8% which means anyone who wants a job in Loudoun has one.
Urban density growth without mass transit investment is a silly pipe dream. Those that wring their hands over mass transit infrastructure noticeably never do so by proposing any other realistic measure to solve the problems of short or long term urban densities but rather almost solely base their objections on where the revenues need to be generated from to pay for it and are are they targeted to contribute for it.
A realistic investment model (not painless) to effectively fund and operate such a mass transit system for the long haul is tapping into land value appreciation via a transit funding tax scheme based on the idea that the benefits of public infrastructure are capitalized into land values and will be repatriated from the actual beneficiaries in this case developers and private landowners.
It seems to me the question here is not investment yes or no but rather what is a fair model to allocate, tax and collect the incremental land monetary value add of mass transit investment from from BOTH developer and private sources. Where there is realistic concern is if the funding required is disproportionately taxed from private property owners while local developers that see immense monetary value add from mass transit infrastructure are allowed to skate free of impacts or severely underpay their mass transit tax fair share. Railing against the urban world we built and the densities that will continue to be a characteristic of it seems to be of little productive value to me besides political posturing.
Mass transit is required and infrastructure investment is the engine to achieve it. It would seem more productive to me to focus on how investment and associated tax based funding allocations are built, are they proportionally fair and are procedures in place to wring specific WMATA cost efficiencies out of any ongoing operational budgets than the ad hominem attacks and my personal Virginia political brain dead favorite it’s all President Trump’s fault. Northern Virginia communities require today and in the future mass transit infrastructure – period. What is helpful is to come up with a plan to fairly pay for it. That is the political help now required by the mass of urban based commuting Virginia voters.
Isn’t proximity to a Metro station the top determinant of real estate value? Why else would real estate sites add Metro proximity filters? How would anyone drive to work without congestion clearing measures like transit? Would Amazon so much as consider the area without Metro? Opposition fails SBT’s governance test.
Hahaha, show me one place where traffic is LESS because of Metro. It NEVER works that way. The only winners in all of this are developers. Metro means more development, a long with that more schools, more police, more firehouses, and more traffic!
Every person on Metro would otherwise clog the road. It ALWAYS works that way. Development is a consequence of commerce and markets, both Republican objectives, no? Or did I get that wrong, now that topsy turvy politics has Republicans opposing law enforcement, too?
No! That’s backwards. If it weren’t for the Metro there wouldn’t have been all the development, all the riders and all the clogged roads. Surely you knew that Metro increases development and traffic?
You do favor development and commerce, don’t you? The actions of the market should take precedence over the socialized hand of the community, right?
How can Virginia Republicans defend a regime of conservation easements and centralized land use planning intended to stifle development? Isn’t this the collective fighting the hand of Adam Smith?
Commerce and development are generally good. The problem is that the development always creates more problems than is solves. NOVA roads are always congested. Schools are at capacity. When we add more development, the developers get millions and the pubic gets millions in debt. We have a massive public-private wealth transfer with the taxpayers losing. That is our core development corruption problem. Add to that the pro-Metro voters have admitted that Metro is not a transportation solution and that, in fact, it is to drive development. We badly need real transportation solutions and should put a halt on development until our infrastructure catches up with the poor planning of the past.
We should take the Metro money and build roads. We have now done the exact opposite and taken road money and diverted it to expand a money-losing Metro with dwindling ridership just as we are entering with dawn of driverless vehicles which will further clog road.
Metro to Loudoun is a complete screw up.
Oh Greg Greg Greg, Your obsession w Metro and your Facebook stalking of people specially Letourneau is alarming buddy — you might want to see someone for help.
And your alternative reality is also alarming; it is Trumpistic since it makes you not only dishonest to yourself and others but also petty. You cut out excerpts from the discussion to make your point since the full discussion shows that 1. You cann’t debate; 2. You are wrong; and 3. You are disrespectful even to old friends (which means you have no value of friends and probably no real friends in life).
Further you made up points/excerpt to make your point in this article: We are already right, don’t need 20 years. The system has been upside down for decades. Read Matt Letourneau’s own Op-Ed where that admission is made. You really need to do a modicum of research pertaining to this issue
Yes readers —not your circle of ten who are acting as puppets on this issue on the behest of one elected puppeteering you— who really care about the Metro issue should read my comments and Letourneau’s explanation to you; not your sad excerpts collection. #smh
In conclusion, you are not David Ramadan, never was and never will be —not even close. I’m proud of my record -including Metro- during two terms in office; a record that earned an A rating from the ACU and an A rating from the NRA; a solid Conservative record even though I represented a 60% D district. My accomplishments speak for themselves Greg while yours leave you at no spot on this earth where you can shame me; get out from your hole and Facebook obsession and do something positive, you may be able then to get in the same universe —but still far away- as me (yes I’m intellectually pure and superior to you Greg); bye bye‼️‼️
Missed the part about the engineered deal, please share some of that pure and superior intellect about your machinations.
Delegate David Ramadan . Did you kiss yourself in the mirror this morning when you woke up ? No one loves David Ramadan more than David Ramadan.
Are you a creepy stalker, asking what he does upon awakening? If so, Rocinante is policing that sort of thing, but it seems like it’s okay if you are wearing the pants Rocinante recommends for you. He’s like that, watching what people wear, write, and why. He’s watching the watchers.
For Gods sake stop ! You are embarrassing yourself. You are absolutely divorced from reality if you don’t think this issue with billions of dollars in the balence is worthy of discussion , debate and solutions. Blowing this off because you don’t approve of my operational model , tactics , and language is both weak and intellectually vapid.
Someone I know has been saying it’s time For Loudoun Leaders to put on their Big Boy pants.
Put on your Big Boy pants.
Please tell me more of this ‘engineered deal’ that flipped the vote that brought metro to Loudoun.
Which was the Vote that ‘flipped?’
Ultimately it was Ken Reid who knew more about what a disaster Metro is than any other Supervisor. He was dead set against it for years, until the final day of the vote.
That doesn’t make sense, Ken left elected office for a job down south… that does seem to have fallen through… Engineered deal??? b-b-b- but … Say it ain’t so Jeanine!!!
Agreed that this “engineering” doesn’t make sense. Ken Reid doesn’t seem to have benefited in any way shape or form from the Metro vote. Although…I vaguely remember something on his County agenda getting passed after the Metro vote but it was so insignificant I don’t even recall what it was.
That said, I’d like to add that we had anti-metro informational meetings around the County that were organized by then-citizen and now Delegate Dave LaRock. One of these panels had me and Ken Reid (and Jeanine’s husband) discussing a great many negatives on voting Loudoun into the financial agreement (and, virtually all of them have come true). But that made Ken’s flip soooooo spectacular. He fully understood the negatives and fully understood how much better bus rapid transit (BRT) was as a transportation solution and advocated for BRT for something like 8-10 years.
And, then, on the day of the vote changed his mind.
The plot thickens.
Someone needs to FOIA Ramadan’s emails from the last couple of weeks before the Metro vote.
Unless it was on his private server, and the blackberrys got smashed. Perhaps David and Ken can clarify the specifics of an engineered deal, if any.
Far too many Virginia “republicans” love them some government works projects (or tax hikes). And then wonder why folks don’t turn out to vote. Its demotivating, duh.