Three Up; Three Down

THREE UP

FRANCIS CHESTER, whose steady flurry of activity has kept him on the front page, managed to migrate from a lower place in this space with his action Friday: paying almost $3,000 in back taxes. The Churchville lawyer has been the face of Augusta County property owners’ reassessment fight, launching a petition drive and vowing to sue if supervisors do not roll back to 2005 values. Before taking up legal arms Chester might have paid his tax bill. Having his name in headlines for tax delinquency surely spurred him to open his checkbook. But we’ll also credit him with soldiering on when others might go slinking away. Property owners might yet benefit from the same chutzpah that prompted Chester to sound the battle cry while still owing tax money.
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Another BIG READ initiative is off and running, aimed at driving up adult literacy. This time, the literacy drive led by libraries across the country kicked off locally this week in Staunton with an interactive murder mystery based on “The Maltese Falcon,” the best of Dashiell Hammett’s series of groundbreaking detective novels. Tracking literacy rates can be like tracking graduation in public schools, accuracy being in the eye of the beholder. But a growing number of measures show the U.S. literacy rate lagging behind other countries in the industrialized world. That poses a threat to America’s long-term economic viability as grave as recession. Here’s to those who fight the problem rather than ignore it.
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Get this: The sun is shining somewhere through the dark economic clouds. In ROCKFORD, ILL., a town rocked by 1980s industrial collapse, officials are working to bring in a Chinese-owned solar panel plant to town that, according to The Wall Street Journal, “could provide hundreds of well-paying jobs and help launch an alternative-energy industry in the region.” Maybe being green isn’t so hard after all.

THREE DOWN

President BARACK OBAMA put terrorists on notice Friday: America is pulling out of Iraq by Aug. 31, 2010. The news was welcomed by almost everyone, including Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who during the presidential campaign vigorously opposed setting a timetable. We don’t quibble with the idea of withdrawal, but we wonder about the security implications of setting a date for the world to see and terrorists to rally around. Somehow, McCain forgot his concerns about telegraphing moves to the enemy. We think that issue is still real. Things could get ugly, both for U.S. soldiers lacking at least an extended veil of secrecy over the move and for Iraqis afterward. Of course, we’ve been wrong before and hope to be this time.
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Stinging from taxpayers’ ire over the reassessment, AUGUSTA COUNTY OFFICIALS this week turned some of their ire on the big, bad media for dutifully reporting that Supervisor Tracy Pyles, the lone voice of restraint on the subject, had an idea for delaying the institution of new values by two years, along with coverage of the various activities of Francis Chester. Reporters also heard about their failure to share the yeoman’s work being done by the assessors board. Suffice it to say that more than a few in power in the county would have preferred The News Virginian refrain from its weeklong, district-by-district look at the reassessment. Scrutinizing a move affecting thousands of people is our job. Bearing that scrutiny is county officials’.
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President BILL CLINTON is feeling a tad put out these days. Somehow, Time Magazine dared list him among 25 people who helped produce the recession. Clinton, of course, helped strengthen the Community Reinvestment Act, which helped produce the subprime lending crisis. That stains him along with other onetime untouchables, like Alan Greenspan. Truth is, there’s blame enough for people of all political persuasions. Clinton deserves his share.