Well, at least the Uranium Mining Bill is DOA.

“Optics-wise, the state Senate GOP’s move could reverberate far beyond the Commonwealth: after using the absence of civil rights leader Marsh to push through the legislative changes, the Senate adjourned in honor of a well-known Confederate general.”

—

Virginia GOP Pulls ‘Dirty Trick’ On Inauguration Day

Wow.

So Virginia’s Senate Republicans just pushed through a new redistricting plan today while a Democratic Senator (active in the civil rights movement) was still out of the capital due to the inauguration.

This left the otherwise balanced chamber with 20R-19D, key because the Republican Lieutenant Governor who would otherwise decide tiebreakers is mulling a run as an independent for Governor this year, and is thus unreliable.

The bill, which is not yet available online due to the abruptness of it all, is purported to gerrymander out at least one Democratic Senator. Ironically, the Senator in question (Creigh Deeds) has been one of the most vocal proponents of a bipartisan/nonpartisan redistricting method over the past decade.

This would come into effect for the 2015 elections, the approximate midway point between traditional redistricting intervals, and when many weakly gerrymandered districts start to lose their potency against natural demographic changes.

Gotta love the Commonwealth.

Edit: While I have mixed feelings on Ben Tribbett, he’s likely going to be one of the first places to get news on what the new map looks like.

Virginia Bill Would Order Schools to Arm Teachers

From the party that is trying to break the teacher’s union, feels they are overpaid and underworked, and could probably afford to have less training for their jobs overall.

The Virginia General Assembly likes to keep their proceedings a secret. Missed the live webstream of a debate or discussion about a bill? You’re out of luck—there’s no way to watch them later.
But. The Virginia General Assembly sellsvideo of their proceedings for $10 per DVD. For the past five years, Richmond Sunlight has annually managed to cobble together the funding to buy a copy of each and every one of those DVDs, rip them, and put them online (on Richmond Sunlight and the Internet Archive) for anybody to watch.
That’s where you come in. It’s expensive to buy all this video. There are guaranteed to be at least two DVDs per day—one for the House, one for the Senate—but some days they go long and two, even three DVDs are created for one or both chambers. Legislative staff tell us that it’ll cost us $1,240 to buy the DVDs for all of 2012, and the video for 2013 will run approximately $930.
So that’s $2,170 to acquire approximately 81 days of video. With the 5% Kickstarter fee and the 5% Amazon Payments fee, that’s a cost of $2,387 to acquire the 2012 and 2013 video, or an average of $14.73 per day per chamber (the House and the Senate).
Richmond Sunlight makes no money off of this—all contributions will be passed along directly to the legislature to buy these DVDs. In fact, Richmond Sunlight has no money, and never has. It has bank account, no revenue, no way to pay for anything at all. (As a result, the IRS counts this as taxable personal income for me, so I’ll probably have pay a few hundred bucks out of pocket come April 15.) In short, if you don’t donate, this won’t happen.Period.
$15 will pay for one day’s video for one chamber. $30 will pay for one day’s video for both chambers. $150 will acquire one week’s video for both chambers. For every $15 you donate, Richmond Sunlight will permanently credit you on one day’s video for one chamber, thanking you for buying that video to make it available freely.
Support transparency. Join us in liberating the 2012 and 2013 Virginia General Assembly video.

Seriously, if you can afford a Starbucks latte, you can afford to help back this project.

The Virginia General Assembly likes to keep their proceedings a secret. Missed the live webstream of a debate or discussion about a bill? You’re out of luck—there’s no way to watch them later.

But. The Virginia General Assembly sellsvideo of their proceedings for $10 per DVD. For the past five years, Richmond Sunlight has annually managed to cobble together the funding to buy a copy of each and every one of those DVDs, rip them, and put them online (on Richmond Sunlight and the Internet Archive) for anybody to watch.

That’s where you come in. It’s expensive to buy all this video. There are guaranteed to be at least two DVDs per day—one for the House, one for the Senate—but some days they go long and two, even three DVDs are created for one or both chambers. Legislative staff tell us that it’ll cost us $1,240 to buy the DVDs for all of 2012, and the video for 2013 will run approximately $930.

So that’s $2,170 to acquire approximately 81 days of video. With the 5% Kickstarter fee and the 5% Amazon Payments fee, that’s a cost of $2,387 to acquire the 2012 and 2013 video, or an average of $14.73 per day per chamber (the House and the Senate).

Richmond Sunlight makes no money off of this—all contributions will be passed along directly to the legislature to buy these DVDs. In fact, Richmond Sunlight has no money, and never has. It has bank account, no revenue, no way to pay for anything at all. (As a result, the IRS counts this as taxable personal income for me, so I’ll probably have pay a few hundred bucks out of pocket come April 15.) In short, if you don’t donate, this won’t happen.Period.

$15 will pay for one day’s video for one chamber. $30 will pay for one day’s video for both chambers. $150 will acquire one week’s video for both chambers. For every $15 you donate, Richmond Sunlight will permanently credit you on one day’s video for one chamber, thanking you for buying that video to make it available freely.

Support transparency. Join us in liberating the 2012 and 2013 Virginia General Assembly video.

Seriously, if you can afford a Starbucks latte, you can afford to help back this project.

NoVA Numbers

Really surprising. I’d love to see some localized exit polls, just to get a better sense of the whys that went into that breakdown. I still think Obama’s got it, but it’s gonna be close.

Virginia: Calling it for Obama

Probably gonna pick it up with even 3+ points.

No Time to Waste

punditspodium:

Unless legislators develop a detailed plan for setting up a state-run health benefits exchange in the next two months, the federal government likely will step in to design and run one to ensure that Virginians get access to comprehensive, affordable and secure health insurance choices, according to a new report released Wednesday by The Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis.

The full report, No Time to Waste, is here.

Given the makeup of both chambers in Virginia at the moment, I think it is actually in our interest to continue stalling on this one.

(via tcifiscal)

Source: punditspodium

Politicalprof: They're back ...

politicalprof:

My personal favorite of their claims is that — in their claiming, not mine — that I (meaning Politicalprof and people like me) are “sovereign citizens.” What this means in practice is that since people like me — white, male and property owning — were legally entitled to be citizens of the US before the US Constitution was created, we are “sovereign” — e.g., superior — to the Constitution. This means that I — meaning Politicalprof and people like me — have the personal right to reject or nullify laws that seem to us to intrude on our freedom since, obviously, we would never have consented to such laws in 1787. I am sovereign over the federal government, which cannot take away my rights as I define them.

I have met some of these people. This is a thing they actually believe. The worst is watching the few that have wives (or 14th Amendment citizens), and the wive’s expressions as these white men make such distinctions.

Source: politicalprof

Waldo Jaquith recently got spotlighted by the Sunlight Foundation. Simply, put, he creates opportunity. Opportunity to see the actions our government takes, opportunity to dialog with others about those actions, and opportunity to ultimately inform those actions.

I first met Waldo when I was 17, at the exact same time that I was first getting seriously introduced to policy and politics. His continued friendship and counsel have been invaluable, and it pleases me to no end to see him moving ever-higher in terms of undertakings and responsibilities.