MZM, Virgil and Waldo
MICKEY POWELL has written a piece in today’s Martinsville Bulletin about the amount of money that Martinsville may end up having to repay the Virginia Economic Development Partnership as the result of MZM, Inc. failing to meet 57% of its performance agreement. Mickey’s article is seventeen paragraphs long, gives an in-depth look at how and why the moneys were appropriated and allocated and DOESN’T MENTION VIRGIL GOODE’S NAME ONCE. Not once. There is no mention of blaming Virgil or the suggestion that Virgil belongs in jail or speculation of wrongdoing. For those “facts” you’ll need to read Waldo’s speculative blogs on the subject, as well as his far from polite comment section.
Nope, none - no mention of Virgil anywhere. The General Counsel for the VEDP, John Sternlicht, however, did reiterate the fact that the city strongly desired the high-paying jobs that MZM/Athena offered and he stated the obvious, “I don’t think either the city or the state could ultimately have foreseen” the closing of the Clearview (Martinsville) facility. I’ll take it a step further, I don’t think ANYONE, Virgil Goode included, could have foreseen how this deal would eventually go South or that some of the parties involved in the deal would go to jail.
I was a guest of the “MZM crowd” under their corporate tent at the Foxfield Races in the spring of 2005. I met Mitch Wade and the others. None of them looked or acted any differently than the bloggers I met at the Martinsville Blog Conference. I would’ve felt completely comfortable accepting money from them, if only they had offered. When Virgil learned that the money his campaign had accepted might be dirty, he donated it to worthy charities. I believe at least one of those charities was an animal rescue group. Only in WaldoWorld would this be seen as an admission of guilt.
Today’s Bulletin article is just the latest in a long string of articles covering the MZM/Virgil story. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Martinsville Bulletin, it is a family owned and operated newspaper as opposed to a corporate one such as Media General owned Richmond Times-Dispatch. As such, the family that owns the Bulletin has control over the content. Have I already mentioned that the family that owns the Bulletin is of the staunchly Democrat(ic) variety? They are. I know this because I’ve also partied (I was honored to hostess a Christmas party and a cookout for them at my home) with the Bulletin staff members and consider them to be friends of mine. It can also be easily verified by seeing the names of the candidates to whom they contribute and endorse, the name and purpose of their charitable trust or just read their paper. I’m not criticizing them by any means - if I owned a newspaper you better believe I’d use it to further my agenda. I only mention the politics of the Bulletin to further establish my point that if there was dirt on Virgil, I know the Bulletin would be giddy at the prospect of reporting it. My guess is that it would merit their largest headline yet!
From the comments over at WaldoWorld: (THIS one is polite)
I am one of his constituents and my answer is “neither.” By this Bubby “logic,” I have to ask, is the Martinsville Bulletin, Roanoke Times, the federal investigators, Vanity Fair magazine or hundreds of others who have investigated this matter, are they all crooks? Are they all stupid? Both?
Virgil Goode might possibly be the cleanest member we have representing us in Congress. Who else has withstood this level of scrutiny? If he’s guilty of anything, then it’s a guilt shared by a great many of us who saw MZM as a much needed opportunity for this area. An opportunity to fill a vacant shell building, to create jobs and most importantly, as leverage to lure other security/technology businesses to locate here. The deals that were made to make this opportunity possible may seem out of the ordinary at first glance, although it was a good example of a collaborative effort between federal, state and local government and the private sector. Just too bad that the private sector entity involved was crooked.
Let’s put the deal into perspective: Recently it was announced that land near the town of Lenoir, NC had been chosen by Google as the site of its newest Web server farm facility. This Google farm is projected to employ about 200 people. What did North Carolina offer Google to land the “deal?” One hundred and fifty acres, thirty years with no real estate taxes (which amounts to more than $100 million) PLUS a grant of $4.7 million. In short, North Carolina is paying about $500,000 per job!
Does it sound like extortion or other mafia-type techniques were used in this NC deal? This AP article pretty much says so. Why did the lawmakers agree to these terms? And then admit it? Is the purpose of luring companies to our area lost in the competition with other localities?
Even without the benefit of this new perspective, I think the benefits of having MZM come to Martinsville in the first place far outweighed the risk.
