You, dear reader, are about to embark on a journey of almost bewildering complexity through a maze of history, law, and finance. I started out life as a simple country dentist, before building up a multi-million dollar business in bronze sculpture of wildlife, which I learned from my boyhood on Virginia’s incomparable Eastern Shore. And then, completely against my own wish, I became a Whistle-blower, trying to ferret out the abyss of corruption of elected and nominated officials in our state capital of Richmond.
Old Dominion, as it’s called, was the capital of the Confederacy. More recently, Virginia has been ranked by the Washington Post as the 5th most corrupt state in the United States. Corruption in what? In shady financial dealings, mostly. It seems that when anyone gets elected or nominated to state wide office, they notice the huge amounts of money that are there for the taking, whether proper or not. And this is where the corruption comes in. If Joe does it, Jack thinks it’s not so bad for him to do it too. Overcharging for commuting. Squeezing in an expensive golf weekend at taxpayer expense. Having a beloved animal put down at an exorbitant cost. Even though alcohol is prohibited as a public expense, why not put on a big BBQ with plenty of booze.
And you’ll want to know how I got on this crusade, and how much it has cost me. My foundry here on the Eastern Shore was once cited for contaminating the water supply, and although the culprit turned out to be something else entirely, I was put to a lot of trouble and expense to extricate myself from a legal and financial boondoggle that really got my dander up. Now, seven years later and many hundreds of thousand of dollars of expense, for requesting and paying for FOIA documents, for hiring and retaining assistants, and for my own expense of time and effort, I am several million dollars into my effort to clean up the state government and put in a new sense of responsibility for all public officials to have toward the cookie jar of which they are the ostensible guardians.
So read what follows with an open mind, There’s a lot here, from my blog CorruptionintheCommonwealth.com. My hope is that you will agree with me that not only is there is lots of corruption that can be cleaned up, but also that anj aroused public is needed to keep elected and nominated officials on their toes and remember that they are serving us, and to take their obligations of public service seriously.
And finally, yes, I am a whistle-blower, and I want an award. For all the work I have done, and for the effort I have put into making my beloved state live up to its stated but rarely achieved ideals, I want to recover what I have spent to pursue my whistle-blower claim, and a bit more. In the past 40 years I have sent many students on from high school to college and I want to expand those efforts. I also have grandkids who would like to have something more from their grandad than a handshake and best wishes. So read on, keep me in mind, and throughout, ask yourself this question, “How might I aid Dr. Turner in his effort to make our state the fifth or even best state in the Union instead of one of the worst.”