Orange officials respond to Walmart challenge

It is nothing short of tragic that our elected officials continue to act as though big business, or big oil, or big banks, or big health insurers were their constituents, instead of those who actually made the mistake of voting for them.  Unfortunately, before they can vote them out, they will already have sacrificed the Wilderness Battlefield to Wal-Mart, and no one will be able to fix the institutional vandalism they have inflicted.
  This is especially tragic because another, more suitable, less intrusive site is available nearby.  I do not live in Orange County, but I am very familiar with the area, because it is on the way to Sweet Briar College, where I graduated in 1967, and also on the way to my best friend’s family home in the Northern Neck.
  More importantly, I live in a National Historic Landmark village in Loudoun County where developers have been allowed to run amok since the early 1960’s, and where we are now living with the hard consequences, both financial and in quality of life, of governmental pandering to the developers and helping them to line their pockets at our expense.
  I sympathize with the previous comment, and wish that government officials could learn from the experience of others, rather than forcing their constituents to suffer the consequences of their having to reinvent the wheel every time.  That is, of course, the charitable interpretation.  The other, probably more realistic one, is that they have been moved to support Wal-Mart against their constituents by some sort of financial emoluments.  In the latter case, poetic justice would demand that they be haunted forever by the ghosts of the Wilderness Campaign.