NO OLF

It only took him five years - and the threat of a tough reelection campaign - to get off his ass and take a position against the Navy's misguided effort to dump an outlying landing field in eastern North Carolina.

Dome is reporting today that the NC Attorney General has all but put a nail in the US Navy's OLF coffin.

A letter from the Attorney General's office to U.S. Rep. Walter Jones, a Farmville Republican, indicates the department would enforce laws by which the state would retain some jurisdiction over lands seized for an OLF in counties that do not already have military bases. That would allow the counties to enforce noise ordinances, for example, on the Navy.

We covered this back in April, when the Virginia Pilot reported that the NC General Assembly had passed legislation that would interfere with the Navy's Reign of Error.

Approximately zero.

Though I appreciate the efforts of our two good Senators to stop the Navy's misguided and ill-advised attempts to ravage farm land and farm families in northeast North Carolina, I can only conclude they don't know how to play the game. Or maybe they do know how and the game's not over yet? Stay tuned.

Dome reports today that North Carolina Congressmen Walter Jones and GK Butterfield are sponsoring an amendment to forbid the US Navy to pursue an outlying landing field in the two NC locations they're stalking these days. Here's the story.

State Senate leader Marc Basnight, D-Dare County, and state Rep. Bill Owens, D-Pasquotank County, have asked North Carolina’s congressional delegation to urge Navy officials to move some of the fighter squadrons based at Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia to Marine Corps Air Station at Cherry Point.

Knowledgeable people, including many here at BlueNC, have argued for this exact same course of action for nearly two years now. It's nice to see elected officials finally getting their acts together.

I will keep this post to a minimum. The Navy provided some feed back to a VA resident who is just as outspoken as I am on this OLF. Tidewater News From this link, the Navy felt obligated to respond with this.

The Tidewater News enables bloggers to write almost as freely as this site does, and many comments about the OLF can be found at this web site. Most of the people are going to this paper to receive and post comments.

I was able to write a rebuttal against almost every statement the Navy threw out there.

The US Navy's plans to dump never-ending noise in the northeast part of our state hit a speed bump last week when the General Assembly wisely passed legislation severely limiting the Navy's ability to commandeer North Carolina land for an outlying landing field. The best coverage of this issue is always out of Virginia.

Asserting its rights under the U.S. Constitution, the North Carolina General Assembly has passed legislation that could complicate any effort by the Navy to build a practice airfield in Camden or Gates counties.

There is a great debate in our state right now about a bill introduced. Our politicians are trying to protect the will of the people with this bill. I would love your thoughts.

Here's a bit of good news: Likely legislation that would prohibit the US Navy from dumping their outlying landing field on the people of North Carolina.

You have to hand it to Richard Burr. After a week of positioning himself as Art Pope's go-to guy for fighting working class people, he's all of a sudden interested in gaining some populist cred. His issue of choice is the Outlying Landing Field.