Because Virginia is not too large to be an insane asylum, here are today's nominees for Worst Virginians in the World!
Third place is the Mark Center in Alexandria and the Pentagon's Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) initiative for the carmageddon about to be unleashed. (BRAC is a federal program and not technically a Virginian, but it is to blame for this.) The gigantic office building for 6,400 defense workers is off the Seminary Road exit at Interstate 395, a main artery of Washington traffic from Northern Virginia with 200,000 commuters each weekday. That interchange also already has three levels of roads.
As the first few dozen employees arrive this week, everyone is bracing for the worst. Gov. Bob McDonnell has established a task force to help manage the traffic. Express buses are needed since the nearest Metro stop is miles away. Alexandria will station traffic police at six area intersections. There is only parking available for 40% of the employees, and there is no carpool-lane exit for that interchange. And the city estimates that it takes up to 15 minutes to drive through it.
Area residents are also nervous. They are worried about mixing traffic with an elementary and middle school, and a community college campus. Foxes, raccoons, and deer have fled the nearby botanical gardens and are invading neighborhoods. One resident said her friend was retiring rather than deal with the traffic!
Four-letter words are already common for I-395 during rush hour, and "BRAC" has just joined that list.
Our runner-up is climate-change skeptic Rep. Morgan Griffith and his ongoing crusade against the Environmental Protection Agency.
He was already called out in March for claiming that the EPA is regulating milk spills as it regulates oil spills.
While stumping for Del. Charles Poindexter in Stuart this week, Griffith complained that the EPA was going too far in regulating carbon dioxide.
"Everybody wants clean water and clean air," Griffith, R-9th (Roanoke, Bristol, Norton), was quoted Tuesday in the Martinsville Bulletin. But to totally eliminate CO2 pollutants, including natural respiration, "every animal has to die," he joked. "I’m against that."
Was she doing it to buy a house or pay off huge personal debts? No, worse. The indictment alleges Grubbs withdrew the funds between June 2010 and this February to wire the money to a Nigerian cabby she met on Match.com who claimed he and his friends had long hospital bills.
The money is likely long gone. "As you might imagine, an email address in Nigeria is all but impossible to track down," a prosecutor said.
In fact, this was after Grubbs drained her and her husband's bank accounts of up to $100,000.
That's disgraced former Goochland County Treasurer Brenda Grubbs, who made someone probably the richest taxi driver in Nigeria, today's Worst Virginian in the World!
