Virginia 2

===

baK CAPT 1119  virginia1119txt SEE MAIN 1 FOR OLDER

va tag

NO MERRI

SEE ABBY SPANBERGER 11 25

SEE GERRY

---

AN 4 26

Last August, a GOP-led gerrymandering effort in Texas resulted in the creation of new Republican congressional seats, sparking a nationwide battle to redistrict several states in an attempt to swing electoral maps in one party of the other’s favor. Now with polls open on a redistricting referendum in Virginia, President Donald Trump ally Steve Bannon is claiming that it is a “demonic” effort by the Democrats to take power and launch impeachment proceedings.

If Virginia voters accept the proposed map, it will lend Democrats a 10-1 advantage in the state, gaining the party four new congressional seats.

“This is their plan,” said Bannon, speaking on his podcast with Virginia GOP chair Jeff Ryer. “Not just, are they going to take power and use these four seats to impeach Trump? But they’re going to use this as a template for the rest of the country. It’s coming.”

Bannon suggested that dark motivations underlie the endeavor.

“These Democrats are demonic,” he declared. “If they weren’t demonic, wouldn’t they show you the map? Wouldn’t they walk you through the logic?”

As Democracy Docketpoints out, Democrats in fact did release a proposed map. Early voting is already open, and the final count is expected to be close. In opposing the effort, state Republicans distributed misleading mailers that suggest top Democrats like President Barack Obama and Governor Abigail Spanberger oppose the redistricting. Both, in reality, support it.

With Trump’s approval rating plummeting to historic lows and the November midterms approaching fast, Republicans have begun panicking over the “inconvenient truth” that they’re almost certain to take major losses. Most experts expect the GOP to lose its majority in the House, and some are even saying the party's majority is vulnerable in the Senate.

According to veteran Republican strategist Mike Madrid, who has spent nearly four decades analyzing elections, "I've never seen the fundamentals of an election cycle as bad for an incumbent party as I am right now,"

---

an 3 26

no lnx

'Disgusting government': Chaos in red state ends House session with cries and shouts

Del. Shawn Fluharty, D-Ohio chastised House members in the final minutes of session for pushing discussion of Raylee’s law to the final hour of the session. (Photo by Perry Bennett/West Virginia Legislative Photography)

Amelia Ferrell Knisely, West Virginia WatchMarch 15, 2026

BeLoud Share

In a flurry of chaos and fiery debate, the House of Delegates passed a version of Raylee’s Law Saturday night at 11:59 p.m., giving the Senate no time to agree on it by the session’s midnight deadline.

The bill won’t head to the governor’s desk.

“I can’t believe we have so many members of the Legislature who stand up and defend child abusers. It’s disheartening, disturbing and heartbreaking,” Senate Education Chairwoman Amy Grady, R-Mason, who sponsored a version of Raylee’s Law in the Senate, said Saturday night.

Raylee’s Law is meant to prevent child abuse by pausing a parent’s request to homeshcool their child if there’s an active abuse and neglect investigation in the home.

Del. Shawn Fluharty, D-Ohio, who has championed Raylee’s Law for years, chastised House members in the final minutes of session as the clock ticked away. They’d had the bill all day to consider, he argued.

“This is abhorrent behavior. Disgusting government,” Fluharty said. “Why are we here defending child abusers? It’s insane.”

The measure is named for Raylee Browning, an eight-year-old girl who died of abuse and neglect in 2018 after her teachers notified CPS of potential abuse, prompting her abusers to move her to homeschooling.

Outside the House chamber, while lawmakers debated the bill, a large poster-sized photo of Raylee was on display.

“When you reject her tonight, go out there and at least have the guts to look at her,” he told House members.

The bill was in the House’s hands when they gaveled in Saturday morning but they didn’t take it up until 11:15 p.m.

Del. Elliott Pritt, R-Fayette, a public school teacher, pleaded with House members to bring it to a vote as soon as possible after multiple Republicans put amendments in the system that needed to be vetted by midnight.

“We have a moment here to do something to protect children that are in harm’s way, That is a fact. I’m very sorry if that fact is very uncomfortable for some of you to deal with,” he said. “I’m pleading with you to please reject these amendments as quickly as possible.”

Raylee’s Law became one of this session’s most high-profile measures due to numerous and, at times, dramatic attempts by both Republicans and Democratic lawmakers to get the bill up for a vote by deadline this year.

A bipartisan group of senators, led by Sen. Ryan Weld, R-Brooke, amended Raylee’s Law into House Bill 5537 late Friday night after overriding a ruling by Senate President Randy Smith — a very rare move — to set up a vote on it. The measure passed with a vote of 24-7 and three senators absent.

Weld said what happened in the House on the final night was “absolutely shameful.”

“They had the bill for eight, nine, 10 hours. They got it before 11 o’clock this morning and did nothing,” he said. “With some of the things that I saw and heard in that debate, I’ve never seen a fight to protect child abusers.”

Raylee’s Law has faced fierce opposition from homeschooling advocates and parents, who argued it was infringement on parental rights and could potentially force their child to stay in an unsafe public school.

During the House floor debate, Del. Adam Burkhammer, R-Lewis, argued that the bill as written wouldn’t solve the problem its supporters were trying to address since it didn’t mandate a CPS investigation. He said the House needed “focus on protecting kids and not making a political stunt out of this (and) not trying to attack homeschoolers.”

“I’m really even kind of frustrated how we’ve politicized this thing, but it’s flawed,” Burkhammer said.

The House has passed versions of Raylee’s Law in 2024 and 2025.

In 2024, a Boone County girl, Kyneddi Miller, died from starvation while being homeschooled, fueling renewed interest in the bill.

“You voted on it. You’ve already passed it. And now all these amendments are popping up and we know damn well why it is,” Fluharty said. “We know this bill is good. We know who it was drafted by. We know what it stands for. It’s not about homeschoolers. It’s not attacking homeschoolers. Those who pretend to be and actually abuse are who we’re going after, you should want to do that.”

Weld said he plans to bring the measure for consideration in 2027.

“After what I saw in here yesterday and over there today, I’m 100% locked in. This is coming back next year, so they better be ready for it,” Weld said.

---}:

AN VA MERC 3 216

It’s a ridiculous idea: temporarily revert to hyper-partisan reapportionment just six years after Virginia voters, weary of its abuses, put an independent bipartisan commission in charge of drawing fairer, more sensible lines.

Virginia voters are being asked to backtrack on a noble choice they made in 2020. Under a bizarre new map proposed by Democratic majorities that rule the General Assembly, Republicans could shrink from five of Virginia’s 11 U.S. House seats to just one.

To enable that, Virginians would have to ratify a state constitutional amendment in a referendum next month that momentarily suspends the independent Virginia Redistricting Commission that took decades of work to bring to life. In its place would be a brutally partisan reapportionment that makes the most notorious gerrymandering of yore seem quaint.

It’s madness — a highly contagious and virulent strain of madness engineered last summer in the laboratory of MAGA chicanery that is Texas, and released upon the body politic at the urging of MAGA’s leader, Donald Trump.

With Trump’s popularity cratering, the president exhorted GOP-ruled states to redraw their congressional districts to purge nearly all Democratic-held seats halfway through the decade of the 2020s rather than await the 2030 census.

This had nothing to do with population shifts or proportional representation. It’s a cynical hedge against an increasingly likely Democratic sweep of Congress this fall and the certainty that a Democratic House and Senate will launch one damning investigation after another into scams, scandals and coverups in Trump’s second White House term.

Lone Star Republicans eagerly raised their hands and said, “I’m your huckleberry!”

A redistricting designed to give five Democratic-held Texas U.S. House seats to the GOP cleared the Texas House on a party-line 88-52 vote. Then the state Senate did the same, also on partisan lines. On Aug. 29, the nation’s second most-populous state was carved into a new map with geopolitical distortions resembling a Rorshach test when Gov. Greg Abbott, an unfailing Trump footman, signed it into law.

Thus commenced America’s race to the bottom. The nation’s most populous state, deep blue California, responded with a map designed to flip five GOP-held seats.

Republican states are painting their districts red; Democratic ones like Virginia are painting theirs blue. According to theNational Conference of State Legislatures, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Utah have joined California and Texas in enacting new, partisan districts. Virginia is among four where legislation to do the same is pending. Indiana and Florida are considering it, both quite late to the game. Alabama, Louisiana, North Dakota and Wisconsin await court rulings or are in litigation that could force mid-cycle remapping.

For a huge swath of the electorate, this raises many questions with no good answers.

Voters, already exhausted, confused and disenchanted, didn’t want yet another rip in the fabric of American civic life. The latest polling shows most voters here prefer our current redistricting process, not the chaotic proposed remapping that’s being pitched to them now.

Tens of millions now must reorient themselves to unfamiliar elected officials and candidates in strange, misshapen new districts in which communities separated by several hours’ drive share little in common economically, historically or culturally.

Is all this really necessary?

In Virginia, where Trump is winless as a candidate and has been an albatross for Republicans in every state election when he’s been in office or on the ballot, Democrats might be able to achieve their goals under the existing congressional lines, said Mark J. Rozell, a political science professor at George Mason University and dean of its Schar School of Policy and Government.

“With the typical midterm reaction against the party in the White House and the fast-declining public approval of this president, Democrats are well-positioned to pick up seats without going through a redistricting process that will just set in motion other such efforts when they are not in power,” he said. “They might even come close to what they’re aiming to get by redistricting.”

Also, a short-term fix may have adverse long-term consequences, Rozell noted. In politics, as in physics, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Something this drastic sets a precedent that invites in-kind retaliation later, when Republicans might control state government wall-to-wall.

Such a tit-for-tat escalation could doom independent redistricting, which Democrats once overwhelmingly embraced.

“I get it that this has become somewhat analogous to an arms race and that the Democrats don’t want to disarm,” he said. “On the other hand, there’s no denying that what the Democrats are proposing to do flies in the face of the position most of them took five years ago, which was very principled.”

Like a broad swath of Virginians, I find the GOP provocation and the Democrats’ response dispiriting.

I understand the Democrats’ argument. In the rabid partisanship ahead of November’s desperate, win-at-all-costs midterm election, expecting them not to respond to Texas Republicans’ naked power grab would be akin to expecting Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to greet Vladimir Putin and his invading Russian army at the gates of Kyiv with the key to the city.

The guardrails of civic and individual decency that once bounded acceptable political conduct are gone. Witness Trump’s seething, unhinged, ego-glutting litany of insults and grievances last Tuesday night that, at 107 minutes, was history’s longest State of the Union speech. (Virginia’s Democratic governor, Abigail Spanberger, delivered a scathing rebuttal that countered much of Trump’s vitriol.)

If Trump’s purpose was to further segregate Americans into hostile tribes and destabilize national cohesiveness, he succeeded.

I don’t know how this all ends. Nobody does. The Virginia Supreme Court has yet to take up Democratic appeals oftwo rulings by a Tazewell County judge in lawsuits Republicans filed to stop the referendum.

Nor do I know how — or even whether — I will vote in this referendum. I suspect I’m not alone.

I know without question that this fight has produced a malicious strain of politics in a state once known for respectful public discourse — or at least the veneer of it. I know I miss who we used to be.

---

AN 3 26

Republicans are attempting to rewrite the narrative of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, but Virginia is not letting that narrative permeate public classrooms.

The Washington Post reported Friday that the Virginia state governor will likely sign a measure that was passed by the state House of Delegates and Senate that bars any public schools from teaching that the attack was a "peaceful" protest. President Donald Trump has long maintained that the violence was peaceful. Other Republicans have referred to it as nothing more than a "tourist visit."

One lawmaker complained that the White House webpage calls January 6 "a peaceful protest, and people who instigated it were the police and National Guard,” said Delegate Dan Helmer (D).

“This is a preventative measure against a massive disinformation campaign on the part of the White House," he added.

Republicans are calling it "mind control," the report said.

"It tells us what we’re not allowed to say, and it tells us what we must say,” complained Del. Tom Garrett (R) in a floor speech. He said that the bill was "evil" and akin to "Nazi Germany" and "Soviet Russia."

In 2022, Virginia's Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin proposed new teaching requirements for those discussing the history of the U.S. around slavery and the Native Americans. Laws in Germany today bar expressions of Holocaust denialism in public.

Trump pardoned 1,500 people charged with crimes related to Jan. 6, even if they accepted their guilt.

---

---

AN 12 25 CONTEXT HISTORY

In joining a national redistricting arms race sparked by President Donald Trump, Virginia Democrats say they may impose a maximalist gerrymander that would disadvantage four of the state’s five Republican congressional representatives.

Republicans are crying foul.

But 12 years ago, Republicans in the Virginia Senate broke tradition by trying to force through a mid-decade redistricting of their own in an effort to win an outright majority in the chamber, which at the time was locked in a 20-20 partisan tie.

Back then, Democrats were the ones howling with indignation.

The Senate Republicans’ 2013 redistricting bid caused such an uproar that major legislative issues that year grounded to a halt for two weeks. A semblance of order was restored only after House Speaker Bill Howell — resisting tremendous pressure from fellow Republicans — ruled the Senate action out of order.

The 2013 incident is a reminder of the length politicians of either party can go when given the opportunity to perpetuate their political power.

“A pox on Republicans for starting it,” said former Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling in a recent interview, “and a pox on the Democrats for now wanting to be part of it.”

The redrawing of Virginia’s legislative districts has happened only once every decade, soon after Census population totals are updated. The only exceptions have been when courts ordered the General Assembly to correct violations of the federal Voting Rights Act.

But in 2013, Senate Republicans didn’t want to wait the better part of a decade (and two election cycles) to reverse maps that Democrats had forced on them two years earlier.

The Senate GOP came up with a mid-decade surprise. They drew more favorable maps that, if adopted, would have put the GOP in a much stronger position in the next general election, which was scheduled for November 2015.

They waited for the House of Delegates to send over a routine bill that contained small, technical adjustments to existing House districts. The plan was to amend the bill to include wholesale changes to all 40 districts.

With Bolling’s tie-breaking vote, Republicans could push the GOP-friendly measure through the Senate. Then, all they would need was the House of Delegates (controlled by a GOP super-majority) to go along and for Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell to sign it into law.

Jeff Ryer, the political staffer for the caucus, said he worried for months that the word would get out. “It had to be one of the best-kept secrets I’ve ever seen in the General Assembly,” he said.

But the plan hit a snag.

Bolling, who in December 2012 bowed out of a bitter gubernatorial nomination contest with conservative Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, told GOP senators that they could not count on his tie-breaking vote.

“It was not something I was comfortable with,” Bolling recently said of the mid-decade changes. “ I was exploring the possibility of an independent campaign for governor. I kind of carved out a different path. I think a lot of guys (in the caucus) understood it.”

Senate Republicans had to put their surprise plan on hold for a day when at least one Democrat was absent.

The opportunity came on Monday, Jan. 21, when the late Sen. Henry Marsh, D-Richmond skipped the daily floor session to attend President Barack Obama’s second-term inauguration in Washington.

Marsh’s empty seat on the Senate floor gave the Republicans a temporary majority of 20-19.

To present the plan, the caucus turned to a moderate with a good-guy image. Sen. John Watkins, R-Midlothian, was the most unlikely legislator to pull what the Charlottesville Daily Progress editorial page would call “one of the most politically cynical and morally flawed maneuvers” in years.

“It wasn’t something I dreamed up,” Watkins said in an interview earlier this month. “The leadership told me, ‘You’re probably the only person who can stand up on the floor and get this through.’”’

Stunned, Democrats exploded with fury. They called the move unconstitutional. They vowed to sue. They threatened to throw sand in the legislative gears. “The collateral damage from this will be immeasurable,” thundered Democratic Senate Minority Leader Richard Saslaw, D-Fairfax.

Undaunted, Republicans rammed through the new maps on a party-line.

The bill moved back to the House, where its fate rested with Howell. The Speaker was charged with determining if House rules would allow the amendment to proceed.

In a recent interview, Howell said that almost from the start he believed the Senate amendment was not “germane” because it went far beyond the narrow scope of the House bill. But he faced pushback from within his own caucus.

House Republicans excluded Howell from some closed-door caucus meetings, an extraordinary challenge to his power. “There was a group within the caucus who said, ‘Why in the world would you not do it’?” said Howell, who served as Speaker from 2003 until 2018.

“There was one guy who said, Why don’t we rush the podium and take him out?’” Howell deadpanned. “Luckily that didn’t happen.”

As pressure built on Howell and the legislative uncertainty entered a second week, Senate Republicans sought to justify their mid-decade surprise.

In a Richmond Times-Dispatch op-ed, Sen. Ryan T. McDougle said the GOP’s action was justified in undoing Democratic maps that he said broke up communities of interest, manipulated population deviations and ignored opportunities to create a sixth minority-majority district.

“Those opposed to (the new maps) may call it a gerrymander, but they’re wrong, both historically and technically – the current districting scheme is a gerrymander,” McDougle wrote.

Some Senate Republicans were more candid about the political motivations of their plan.

Then-Senate Republican Leader Tommy Norment chided Senate Democrats, who had similar partisan incentives when they held power in 2011, of wrapping themselves “in a shroud of political virtue.”

In a recent interview, Norment said his biggest objection to the 2011 maps was that they broke up Yorktown, Jamestown and Williamsburg, known as the Historic Triangle.

“My interest was more geographic than partisan,” he said.

In the GOP redo, Williamsburg was removed from the district of Sen. John Miller, a Newport News Democrat, and restored to Norment’s domain.

But the tinkering with Miller’s district didn’t end there. Republicans stripped 16 precincts from Miller’s home base of Newport News and pushed a portion of his district across the James River, where it cut a narrow, 40-mile path from Smithfield to the outskirts of Petersburg, breaking up communities of interest along the way.

If the Senate plan had become law, Miller’s district would have gone from +15-D to +5-R – a rightward swing of 20 points.

As the standoff dragged on into February, Watkins came to regret his decision to go along with the January surprise. His nice-guy image was compromised and Democrats’ support of his two big initiatives — transportation funding and uranium mining — evaporated.

“With a single, premeditated act of political survival, the 31-year lawmaker and chairman of the Senate committee that oversees big business managed to get on nearly everyone’s #%!@ list,” observed Jeff Schapiro in the second of two columns in the Richmond Times-Dispatch that excoriated Watkins.

Meanwhile, then-Sen. Donald McEachin, D-Henrico, took the floor to lay bare the pretense of Senate Republicans’ claim that their maps had been motivated by “being good to Black folks.” He noted that the plan would pack Black people into districts, diluting their power in the suburbs.

“That is plantation politics,” McEachin said.

On February 6, the crisis ended when Howell issued his ruling that the Senate amendment strayed too far from the narrow, technical intent of the House bill.

Looking back, Howell said that most people who pressed him to rule otherwise understood his belief that the legislature’s institutional integrity depends on consistent application of the rules.

“They did not try to make the case it was germane,” Howell recalled. “They were just saying, ‘Bill, this would really help if you saw it this way.’”

Those who know Howell well say he was placed under an incredible amount of pressure to look the other way.

“Bill Howell paid dearly for that decision,” recalled Del. Bobby Orrock, R-Spotsylvania, one his lieutenants.

When asked if the ruling was the most significant decision in his 15 years as speaker, Howell said, “It was up there pretty high.”

Howell added that he wasn’t looking to open old wounds or make himself appear holier than thou. “It was an easy thing to do what I did because it was right,” he said.

Looking back, Watkins regrets his decision to go along with the plan. He agrees that Howell made the right call.

“You go through life and sometimes you screw up. This was one of them,” said Watkins, who announced in 2015 that he would not seek re-election, ending a legislative career that began in 1982.

---

---

AN 11 25 ALL 3 WON PLUS PA SCOTUS

The November 4 elections found Democrats enjoying a mini-blue wave as their candidates enjoyed a long list of victories — including double-digit wins in Virginia's gubernatorial race (former Rep. Abigail Spanberger), New Jersey's gubernatorial race (Rep. Mikie Sherrill) and New York City's mayoral race (State Assemblyman Zohran Mandami). Those races were called by the Associated Press (AP) as well as CNN and ABC News.

Spanberger, according to AP, defeated her GOP opponent, Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, by roughly 13 percent. But according to GOP pollster Frank Luntz, the size of Spanberger's victory is reflected by not only the total numbers, but the individual counties.

On X, formerly Twitter, Luntz posted, "Every single county in Virginia shifted blueward tonight."

Luntz posted a county-by-county breakdown for Virginia, a key swing state. And even in the counties that Earle-Sears won, Spanberger posted far larger numbers compared to Democratic candidates of the past.

For example, Earle-Sears carried Salem County by 12 percent, but according to Luntz, that's a 6.9 percent improvement for the Democratic Party in that red county.

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

Spanberger, according to Luntz, won Portsmouth County by 47 percent (an 8.1 percent swing for Democrats) and Prince William County by 34 percent (a 16 percent blue shift).

In Virginia's House of Delegates, Democrats built on their current majority, now holding 64 seats to Republicans' 36. This means that Virginia Democrats' goal of passing a redistricting map to counter Republican mid-decade redistricting in Texas and elsewhere is likely to pass, with Spanberger giving Democrats a trifecta.

---

---

'Losing sucks': Virginia GOP infighting ensues after governor’s failed $1.4M campaign - Alternet.org

===

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/gop-va-senate-candidate-claims-public-schools-poisoned-the-mind-of-his-nonbinary-child/

4 23

===

'Hard to overstate' how badly Trump hurt Republicans in Virginia: political strategist

---

no lnx

'The cognitive dissonance is frightening': Inside the manipulation of Trump's supporters

John Stoehr June 29, 2025

As I was editing the following interview with Charles Gaba, founder of ACAsignups.com, I was reminded of something Will Stancil told me during my chat with him. Will said, “I think people are used to living in a relatively stable era and have come to believe that stability is normal."

Will was talking about the dominant interpretation of political history among liberals. For most of us, the battles of the past settled the biggest arguments, and from those settlements arose a period of relative peace and stability that nearly all of us take for granted.

Will said: “Liberals have trained themselves to see the world through this very particular end-of-history lens, where the ‘stuff that matters’ is inevitably wonky policy questions, the day-to-day of taxes and government, who gets subsidies, what healthcare policy looks like.

“But it’s ridiculous. History isn’t over, the future will contain events as dramatic and horrible as the events of the past, and this stuff is just what it looks like: an assault on the foundations of our government, with all the terrifying and weighty implications that it seems to have.”

Complicating this is the concept of American exceptionalism, which is to say, the idea that America is the exception to the rule of the world. In most of the nations in global history, might has made right. The law was never applied equally, or universally. It has usually been just another tool of political elites to maintain their preferred status quo.

But liberals don’t want to believe that about America, even when they acknowledge that the country often falls short of its stated ideals. We tell ourselves that whatever tyranny we face is a temporary setback to the inevitability of America's soul being revealed once and for all.

Because of this faith, most liberals, but not only liberals, can’t imagine a future in which the government is trying to hurt them. We say that that only happens in times like the early 20th century, in places like Soviet Russia or Maoist China. There are no gulags here, we say. The government can’t possibly seek to inflict mass suffering and death.

We have to change this mindset. America is just like any other country. It’s not that special. We can love it, flaws and all, even when it’s not the exception to the rule of the world. The battles of the past century have not settled the biggest arguments. Social instability arising from insane public policies will almost certainly become the new norm. And the government can, as it seems to be doing now, try to kill the sickest 5 percent of the population to create conditions for controlling the rest.

In the dark disturbing interview with healthcare policy expert Charles Gaba that follows, the specter of social Darwinism lurks in the background. The unstated belief behind every policy decided by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr is “the survival of the fittest,” in which the strong should rule and the weak should die.

“Everything [Kennedy], the Trump administration and congressional Republicans are doing seems to be intended to ensure that sick people simply die off, which presumably would make those who survive healthier on average, thus achieving his ‘MAHA’ goal,” Charles said.

Robert F Kennedy Jr wants to change the way children are given vaccines. First, is there a problem with the status quo? What are they looking for that we don't know about, if anything?

To the best of my knowledge there aren't any issues with the status quo beyond some states being far too lenient on vaccination requirements (religious objections, etc). My view is that the sole exceptions should be people who have legitimate medical conditions, which make them unable to take a particular vaccine.

The argument seems to be that children are being over-vaccinated as a way of padding drug companies pockets with unnecessary vaccinations. The claim seems to be that children are extremely unlikely to die from or to be seriously harmed by covid, for instance, and therefore, it's unnecessary to vaccinate them – except that even if true, they can still be carriers who infect higher-risk adults, and so on.

It seems like this is what happens when conspiracy theory finds traction in public health policy. Is that right and why?

Absolutely. The most recent anti-vax movement (sparked by [British fraudster] Andrew Wakefield and popularized by celebrities like Jenny McCarthy) started out as more of a left-leaning thing via "granola mom" types (I believe Marin County, California, is considered the "birthplace" of that resurgence) in the late 1990ss and early 2000s.

I think – and again, I'm not an expert on this – it began gaining major traction among Republicans during the 2016 GOP primary when Donald Trump told a vague anti-vax story about a supposedly non-autistic child who "became" autistic after getting vaccinated.

And of course this thinking went into overdrive among MAGA Republicans during the covid pandemic, even though it was the administration of their own lord & savior, Donald Trump that helped develop the very mRNA vaccines they were protesting against.

Since then it's gotten so far out of control that Republican lawmakers in several deep-red states – including Iowa, Montana and Idaho – have actually introduced legislation that would ban mRNA vaccines!

The cognitive dissonance is frightening.

So conspiracy theories are being used to rationalize political outcomes? If so, one of the outcomes is death. Getting rid of people is a rightwing goal, historically. We can say that reasonably, no?

Vaccine specialist and science communicator Edward Nirenberg put it best this morning: "If I were HHS secretary and my goal were to kill as many children as possible, it would be difficult to distinguish the actions I would take from those that Kennedy has taken."

In this particular instance he was referring to yesterday's announcement that RFK Jr is withdrawing US funding from the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), but he could be talking about any number of other policy changes RFK Jr has made already.

I don't know if it's a "rightwing" goal generally, but it sure as hell seems to be the goal of the Trump administration and MAGA Republicans.

When RFK Jr rolled out his "Make America Healthy Again" campaign, the assumption was that he intended to make existing Americans healthy. Instead, everything he, the Trump administration and congressional Republicans are doing seems to be intended to ensure that sick people simply die off, which presumably would make those who survive healthier on average, thus achieving his "MAHA" goal.

Call it Operation Nietzsche, I suppose.

I've written several explainers about the goals of the Affordable Care Act and how health insurance risk pools work, which involve this concept: Generally speaking, around 5 percent of a given large population tends to eat up around 50 percent of all medical spending.

Kennedy’s and the administration’s "logic," therefore, seems to be that if you simply killed off the sickest 5 percent of the population, healthcare costs for the remaining 95 percent would be cut in half.

This is obviously immoral and appalling, but it also seems to be the driving force behind many of their decisions.

It sounds like social Darwinism has been restored in popularity. I mean, even MAGAs, who will themselves be killed by such policies, will nevertheless support them if they also kill people who are "undeserving." It's like a suicide cult that few can see.

This is a trend that folks like Jonathan Metzl (one of his books is literally titled Dying of Whiteness) have been talking about for years, and which I analyzed extensively during the covid pandemic.

I found a direct and steep correlation between Trump support and covid death rates as well as a direct inverse correlation between Trump support and vaccination rates at the county level.

Lyndon Johnson famously put it best:

"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.”

Another goal of rightwing politics is social control. Kennedy came close to saying that when he said this week his goal is everyone wearing "wearables" in four years. How is this even debatable?

The irony goes through the roof. One of the biggest and most absurd conspiracy theories among the MAGA anti-vax crowd regarding covid vaccines was that they supposedly included tiny "microchips" that would "magnetize" you, and allow Bill Gates to track your every move etc. (Of course, the fact that everyone carrying smartphones around these days pretty much allows various companies to do exactly that already was apparently lost on them).

Yet many of the same crowd gush over Elon Musk's companies, including Neuralink, which literally implants microchips into the human brain, and Tesla, which can literally track the location of their cars (so can most other carmakers to some extent these days).

And now you have RFK Jr pushing for "everyone" to wear small devices on their bodies that allow private companies and/or potentially the federal government to track not only your every move but your most private medical and health data via biometrics, etc.

Meanwhile, Republicans in some states like Virginia have introduced bills to track women’s menstrual cycles, something which Vice President JD Vance was a proponent of as recently as 2023.

---

12 24

andrew ferguson

clarence clerk

mcconnell mafia liar

solic genl virginia AG disinfo bd

rICHMOND, Va. ( abc 7News) — Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares is leading a group of 20 State Attorneys General who are preparing to take legal action against President Joe Biden’s new Disinformation Governance Board, which was unveiled at a time when Elon Musk announced he was trying to purchase Twitter.

“It seems like some people in the Biden administration probably took George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Fourand they thought the Ministry of Truth was somehow a model when in reality, it was a warning to all of us, which is one of the bedrock principles of this country is your first amendment, and it should be protected and the federal government has such broad power that it shouldn't be in the position of a policing speech,” Miyares told 7News.

“I think it could have a chilling effect on what I call the marketplace of ideas. And the one thing about Americans is we feel like we have the freedom to debate and discuss and that's healthy for democracy. The federal government shouldn't be weighing in and possibly having a chilling effect on free speech. And the second is, there's no authority statutorily for them to create this new governing board.”

The Virginia Attorney General is also concerned about the credibility of President Biden’s appointee who is leading the board, Nina Jankowicz, a Virginia resident.

Miyares is calling her a far-left activist who isn’t neutral, and in a letter to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Miyares went as far as calling Jankowicz the “Mary Poppins of disinformation” referring to a TikTok video she published of herself singing a Poppins’ styled song.

“When Rudy Guiliani shared bad intel from Ukraine,” she said. “Or win TikTok influencers say COVID can’t cause pain. They’re laundering disinfo and we really should take note. And not support their lies with our wallet, voice, or voice. Oh!”

Nina Jankowicz on TikTok

Miyares is also concerned with what she said about some parents in Loudoun County, labeling some as dis-informers.

"Critical Race Theory has become one of those hot button issues that the Republicans and other dis-informers who are engaged in disinformation for-profit frankly, there are plenty of media outlets that are making off of it too,” said Jankowicz. “I live in Virginia. In Loudoun County, that's one of the areas where people have really honed in on this topic.”

“The third issue of concern on this is the fact that they claim this is going to be somehow an even-handed review of communications out in the public sphere, and then they appoint the person that's going to be, by all accounts, the referee of what’s fair, an individual that has directly attacked Virginians,” said Miyares. “She went after and criticized heavily concerned parents that were attending school board meetings bringing up a variety of different concerns, including in Loudoun and she was calling them peddlers of misinformation.”

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is defending the work the Disinformation board is doing.

"What it will do is gather together best practices in addressing the threat of disinformation from foreign state adversaries from the cartels and disseminate that information to the operators,” said Mayorkas.

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on CNN

And Mayorkas is defending Jankowicz.

“They say she is not neutral,” said CNN’s Dana Bash. “Your response?”

Read the letter from AG Miyares to DHS Secretary Mayorkas:

AG Miyares to DHS Secretary Mayorkas by Don Parker on Scribd

“Imminently qualified,” Mayorkas replied. "A renowned expert in the field of disinformation.”

“And neutral?” asked Bash.

“Absolutely so,” replied Mayorkas.

===

===

3 23

in the antebellum South — before the U.S. Civil War and the abolition of slavery — Virginia was a slave state. And it had laws governing the treatment of slaves.

In 2023, a judge in Fairfax County, Virginia is drawing vehement criticism after referencing that 19th Century law in a case involving a divorced man and his ex-wife who are in disagreement over two embryos that have been frozen. Virginia resident Honeyhline Heidemann, who is 45, wants to use the embryos, but her ex-husband, Jason Heidemann, objects.

Fairfax County Circuit Court Judge Richard E. Gardiner, the Associated Press (AP) reports, has ruled that human embryos can be considered property or "chattel." And he based his decision in part on that 19th Century law.

READ MORE:House Oversight Republicans held two hearings with witnesses accused of racism and praised by David Duke

Gardiner, according to AP reporter Matthew Barakat, "conducted a deep dive into the history of the law" and "found that before the Civil War, it also applied to slaves."

"The judge then researched old rulings that governed custody disputes involving slaves, and said he found parallels that forced him to reconsider whether the law should apply to embryos," Barakat reports in an article published on March 9. And Gardiner wrote, "As there is no prohibition on the sale of human embryos, they may be valued and sold, and thus may be considered 'goods or chattels.'"

Susan Crockin, a legal scholar at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., slammed Gardiner for his argument in the embryo case and told AP, "It’s repulsive and it's morally repugnant."

Solomon Ashby, president of the Old Dominion Bar Association, was also critical of the judge but was not as biting as Crockin. Ashby told AP, "I would like to think that the bench and the bar would be seeking more modern precedent."

==

mma  https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/wiring-system-inside-you-controlled-5g-house-nominee-leon-benjamin-pushes

no lnx many vids

A “wiring system inside you that is controlled by 5G”: GOP nominee for House special election pushes bizarre anti-vax conspiracy theories

WRITTEN BY ERIC HANANOKI

PUBLISHED 01/12/23

pix Rob Wittman, Leon Benjamin, and Glenn Youngkin

Republicans have nominated right-wing commentator Leon Benjamin for Virginia's special U.S. House election next month. Benjamin is an election denier who has frequently pushed fringe conspiracy theories, including claiming that thepandemic was actually a “cover-up” by elites to usher in a “new world order”; COVID-19 vaccines contain a “tracking system” and herald the “mark of the beast”; and COVID-19 tests secretly implement a “wiring system inside you that is controlled by 5G.”

Benjamin is a pastor and the host of B-Alert News, which streams on the conspiracy theory network Brighteon. He has appeared as a commentator on numerous fringe programs, including those hosted by QAnon supporters Ann Vandersteel, Mel K, and Jeffrey Pedersen (or “intheMatrixxx”).

Benjamin has been on a program on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars network with host Owen Shroyer, who is a January 6 insurrectionist and Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist. Benjamin posed for a picture with Jones in 2021.

Leon Benjamin and Alex Jones

From a November 14, 2021, Facebook post by Leon Benjamin

He is running in the February 21 special election for Virginia’s 4th Congressional District, which was vacated due to the death of Democratic Rep. Donald McEachin. Benjamin unsuccessfully ran for the seat in 2020 and 2022.

Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who has attempted to portray himself as a moderate, endorsed Benjamin during his 2022 run. The Virginia GOP backs his campaign, writing that he will “defend the interests of working families in Congress.” Benjamin was previously the chair of the Richmond City Republican Party.

:{

}:

Benjamin was outside the Capitol on January 6 and posted about his participation on Facebook. He has also posted a conspiracy theory about the death by suicides of police officers at the Capitol, writing: “FOURTH DC Metro Police Officer Who Responded to January 6 Capitol Protest Dies by Suicide. Does this sound strange to anyone??? We must pray harder now. We are at the Red Sea Moment in America’s history! The armies of Pharaoh and these faces we will see no more.”

Benjamin is one of numerous right-wing pundits with a history of extreme commentaries who have attempted to make the leap to elected office in recent years.

Benjamin regularly uses his media platforms to promote conspiracy theories about prior elections and COVID-19. Here are numerous examples.

Benjamin claimed that COVID-19 “was a cover-up for the actual agenda, which was to take over our nation through tyranny and set up a whole, what we say, a global reset, a  new world order. A new form of government.” From the September 8, 2022, edition of Catching Fire News:

Video

CitationFrom the September 8, 2022, edition of Catching Fire News

LEON BENJAMIN: COVID was not just about, you know, some disease entering in. It was a cover-up. It was a cover-up for the actual agenda, which was to take over our nation through tyranny and set up a whole, what we say, a global reset, a new world order. A new form of government that they are hoping through oppression and depression that the people will say we have no other choice. … Cuba, Venezuela, Russia, China. We can go on. Everywhere where people have been taken their rights, their God-given rights away from them are now under a regime, a tyrannical government that tells them who's going to be in office every year.

Benjamin claimed that COVID-19 vaccines include supposedly satanic “luciferase” and PCR tests implement a wiring system that is “controlled by 5G.” Despite conspiracy theorists’ claims, as The Associated Press wrote, “Luciferase is not an ingredient in any of the COVID-19 vaccines. Instead, luciferase is a generic term for a group of enzymes that trigger the oxidation of chemicals called luciferins.” PCR tests also do not implement a 5G system in human bodies. From the September 27, 2021, edition of Benjamin’s program:

Video

CitationFrom the September 27, 2021, edition of B-Alert News

LEON BENJAMIN: The ingredients inside the vaccine, SM-102, luciferase. Go to TimeToFreeAmerica.com, you'll see it: luciferase. That — it’s a patent. And guess what the patent is? 060606.

…

We’re against the test that they do, the thing they put up your nose. Nothing should go up your nose. I don’t know who I'm talking to right now. No. They can take my blood and take my spit. I'll spit all day -- I’ll spit all day. But you're not putting anything in my body or anything up my nose because even in the testings that they do — I think it's called the SSMR test?

ANN VANDERSTEEL: PCR, PCR test.

BENJAMIN: Now what is it?

VANDERSTEEL: It's called a PCR test.

BENJAMIN: The PCR test, the PCR test where they took this thing and shove it up your brain. It has graphite on it.

VANDERSTEEL: Graphene oxide.

BENJAMIN: Yeah. We're finding out that it is something that can form its own system -- wiring system inside you that is controlled by 5G.

Benjamin claimed that elites want to vaccinate people “so they can put these particles inside of us that are controlled by 5G.” During his show in February 2022, Benjamin pushed the conspiracy theory that elites are implanting 5G nanotechnology through COVID-19 vaccines.

Video

CitationFrom the February 21, 2022, edition of B-Alert News

LEON BENJAMIN: Let's understand the natural pathway that God already created for us as human beings, not robots, not cyborgs, OK? Not mind-controlled, you know, by the elite and by the media and by the George Soroses and the Charles Schwabs. All of those guys who want to control us, the Bill Gates wants us to be jabbed, what, every three months so they can put these particles inside of us that are controlled by 5G. This nanotechnology stuff that they've been experimenting on animals. I mean, it's just terrible what they're trying to do.

Benjamin claimed that COVID-19 vaccines are “really a tracking system that the enemy wants to use” to trap people. COVID-19 vaccines do not contain tracking systems. From a May 5, 2022, video:

Video

CitationFrom the May 5, 2022, edition of The Elijah List

LEON BENJAMIN: I've been watching a lot of movies like The Matrix lately and showing how the enemies attempt to fabricate true life on Earth. And this now thing with technology, with artificial intelligence. This thing going on and you know, Clay Clark, we talk about it a lot during the ReAwaken tours, about the nanotechnology that now wants to come inside of us where humans can be trapped now forever through quote unquote “vaccine.” But it's really a tracking system that the enemy wants to use.

Benjamin has compared COVID-19 vaccines to “the mark of the beast.” Here are two examples -- from his March 7, 2022, show;

Video

CitationFrom the March 7, 2022, edition of B-Alert News

LEON BENJAMIN: You can't make me take a product that I don't want, i.e. the vaccine. You can't. You can't legislate me to take a product that I don't want. Now, you know why the power of the anti-Christ is going to be really revelant in the days coming to force you and I to buy and sell something we don't want. That's called 6-6-6, by the way, the mark of the beast. 

:{

}:

And from a September 10, 2021, interview on The Pete Santilli Show: 

:{

}:

Video 

CitationFrom the September 10, 2021, edition of The Pete Santilli Show

:{

}:

LEON BENJAMIN: The Bible says in the Book of Revelations he's going to be wounded and come back to life. But that's going to be all the workings of Satan, all the workings of Satan to give this beast this power. Now here's the other part. Then what's going to happen when this beast has the power, he's going to say that you have to receive a mark in your hand or in your forehead. Sort of like going on with this vaccine right now. Did you know that the vaccine, the patent that Bill Gates bought for the vaccine is 6-6-6? Did you know that? And that Congress is working on a legislation called H.R. 6-6-6-6.And that Chrome, the symbol for Chrome, the Google Chrome, is 6-6-6? The word corona spelled out -- all right? CROONA -- CROONA is 6-6-6. Are you hearing me? The whole thing about what happens in the end days is that we who are alive and remain will not take the mark.

Benjamin claimed his 2020 election was stolen from him in “the greatest heist that could ever happen to America.” Benjamin lost his 2020 race by a little more than 23 percentage points. From an April 2021 video:

Video

CitationFrom the April 28, 2021, edition of PureSocial TV

LEON BENJAMIN: Sure enough, by 11 p.m., I was winning and by 3 o’clock in the morning, I was losing. Vote counting has stopped. I don't know what happened. Something happened.

DOUG WADE (host): The witching hour.

BENJAMIN: Yeah.

WADE: 3 o’clock.

BENJAMIN: 3 a.m., something happened. And we now know that it was the, it was the greatest heist that could ever happen to America. It was a hijacking of our Constitution, a Republican system, Republic system.

Benjamin claimed that the 2020 election “was stolen. It was infiltrated by China and by many other communistic nations.” From an August 20, 2022, interview:

Video

CitationFrom the August 20, 2022, edition of Now is the Time

LEON BENJAMIN: I will not back down. I know that the elections were tampered with. I believe with all my heart that it was tampered with. It was stolen. It was infiltrated by China and by many other communistic nations. And even in our own nation, sold out. We were sold out by our own brethren. 

:{

}:

Benjamin: “They made up ballots. They recounted ballots. They did all kinds of stuff. They finagled with the machines.” From a September 10, 2021, interview on The Pete Santilli Show: 

Video

CitationFrom the September 10, 2021, edition of The Pete Santilli Show

LEON BENJAMIN: We have to be able to say, I'm not taking the vaccine. It is a demonic entity created in a lab by Dr. Fauci and his gain-of-research crew. And they bought patents, Bill Gates, George Soros, all those guys, bought patents way before the vax, the virus even came out. And it's a lie. All of those stuff is a lie. The election fraud is a lie. They made up ballots. They recounted ballots. They did all kinds of stuff. They finagled with the machines. We have to say now without a shadow of a doubt we know what you did.

===

foia virginia kay coles james UIP CPI ziklag... no rsponse? 8 22

https://www.americanoversight.org/document/records-request-to-virginias-secretary-of-the-commonwealth-office-for-communications-with-ginni-thomas

===

===

11/21

In an extremely tight attorney general race, Republican Jason Miyares defeated Democrat incumbent Attorney General Mark Herring. Miyares’s experience as a prosecutor and commitment to defending the rule of law helped him win this election. Attorney General-elect Miyares will be Virginia’s first Latino elected to statewide office. Herring also makes history tonight, as the first Virginia Attorney General to lose re-election since Francis Blair lost in 1885.

Miyares’s victory was aided in part by a $2.6 million investment from the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), which was used by the Miyares campaign to supplement television ad buys.

RAGA Chairman South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson released the following statement congratulating Jason Miyares on his victory.

“I appreciate Jason stepping up to the plate and running a campaign focused on public safety and respect for our guiding principles, the Constitution and rule of law. Jason will be a welcome addition within our organization and I am looking forward to working with him to ensure that America continues to be safe and prosperous.” 

RAGA Executive Director Peter Bisbee echoed Chairman Wilson’s remarks.

“Jason Miyares tirelessly made his case to Virginia voters as he campaigned across the Commonwealth in recent months. Miyares’s hard work, aided by financial support from RAGA, paid off and Virginia will have an attorney general who won’t back down from tough fights to protect the Constitution and rule of law. I look forward to having Miyares join our ranks and be a part of the coalition that is pushing back against the administrative state. After eight years of failed Democrat leadership in the AG’s office, Virginians had enough. I view Virginia as a bellwether and am confident voters across the country will vote out a number of incumbent Democrat attorneys general in 2022. I look forward to continuing to expand the majority next year.” 

===

2 22

A group of 13 youth climate activists has filed a lawsuit accusing their home state of Virginia of backing fossil fuel projects that contribute to the climate crisis in violation of their constitutional and public trust rights. The plaintiffs are aged 10 to 19 and are represented by Our Children’s Trust. In related news, another group of young activists announced their historic climate trial against the state of Montana will begin next February.

===

===

omfg bs

no lnx

Virginia Senate Panel Rejects Trump EPA Chief For Top Virginia Environmental Post

Democratic lawmakers in the commonwealth took a first step toward defeating Andrew Wheeler's nomination as the state's secretary of natural resources.

Chris D'Angelo

By

Chris D'Angelo

02/01/2022

Democrats on a Senate committee in Virginia moved toward blocking Andrew Wheeler from being the next secretary of natural resources in the state.

Democratic state senators in Virginia took a first step Tuesday toward blocking Andrew Wheeler, Donald Trump’s controversial second head of the Environmental Protection Agency and a former coal lobbyist, from becoming the state’s top environmental official.

A Senate committee that considers gubernatorial nominees voted 9-6 along party lines to remove Wheeler’s name from a resolution approving Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s (R) Cabinet appointments.

But, as The Virginian-Pilot reported, it may not be the end of the line for Wheeler’s nomination. His name could ultimately be added back to the resolution on the Senate floor. All it would take is a single Democrat in the narrowly divided state Senate voting with Republicans.

Tuesday’s vote adds to what has proved to be a contentious confirmation process, in which scores of current and former EPA employees urged Virginia lawmakers to vote against Wheeler, citing his record of gutting environmental rules while at the helm of the federal agency.

Virginia Senate Democratic Caucus Chair Mamie Locke called Wheeler’s nomination “dangerous for Virginia’s future.”

“Governor Youngkin has said time and time again he would like to bridge the partisan divide and work together for Virginia’s next generation,” Locke said in a statement following the vote. “However, his choice of Trump alum Andrew Wheeler for the position of Secretary of Natural Resources proves his unwillingness to bring properly qualified officials into our government.”

Youngkin tapped Wheeler to serve as his secretary of natural resources in January and, in the face of mounting public pressure, maintained he was “the most qualified person for this job.”

Democrats, who hold a 21-19 majority in the state Senate, signaled last week that they were united in their opposition and had the votes to sink Wheeler’s nomination. But one member of the party,Sen. Joseph D. Morrissey, revived what seemed like a doomed nomination, telling The Washington Post after Wheeler’s appearance before a Senate committee last week that he was “very much open” to confirming Youngkin’s Cabinet pick.

At that hearing, Wheeler defended his legacy and said he’d become a lightning rod because the press did not cover “positive things” during his tenure. He also blamed Congress for his own inaction on climate change, arguing he was “dealt a very limited hand” to confront the global threat sinceCongress hasn’t passed more stringent laws to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

After listening to Wheeler’s testimony, Morrissey told the former EPA chief that he was “very articulate and persuasive.”

Environmental groups accused Wheeler of trying to rewrite history.

In Virginia, governors’ Cabinet nominees typically sail through confirmation. But Wheeler, who played an outsize role in the Trump administration’s industry-friendly deregulatory push, emerged as a uniquely controversial choice. More than 150 former EPA employees; dozens of environmental groups and AFGE Council 238, a union that represents more than 7,500 EPA employees nationwide, all sent letters calling for Virginia senators to oppose Youngkin’s choice.

In response to mounting criticism, more than 130 of Wheeler’s former colleagues at EPA and elsewhere sent their own letter defending his record and dismissing previous letters as “highly biased and unsupported.”

In a statement following Tuesday’s vote, Youngkin spokeswoman Macaulay Porter said thegovernor “is disappointed that the committee put partisan politics over the selection of an experienced public servant who would prioritize cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay and James River.”

RELATED...

Trump EPA Chief's Bid For Top Virginia Environmental Post Likely Doomed

EPA Union Urges Virginia Lawmakers To Reject Trump’s Former EPA Chief

===

https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/jason-miyares/

new ag

===

undercover jrnlist windsor

"Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio confided in her that Donald J. Trump would soon announce he was running again for president in 2024," Gabriel reports. "Glenn Youngkin, the Republican nominee for governor of Virginia, revealed to her that he could not publicly press his anti-abortion agenda for fear of losing independent voters….Her encounter in December 2020 with Tommy Tuberville, then a senator-elect from Alabama, elicited the first real evidence that some Republicans in the Senate would reject the Electoral College votes certifying Mr. Biden's victory — a move based on groundless claims of fraud."

Windsor, according to Gabriel, hasn't been shy about saying outrageous things she doesn't actually believe in the hope that Republicans will agree with them. For example, she once told far-right Republican Cecil Bell, Jr. — who serves in the Texas House of Representatives — "This is a Christian state, and Democrats are not Christian." Bell wasn't the least bit offended:

===

===

rww 921

koch-Funded Americans for Prosperity Spends Big to Help GOP Take Over Virginia House

===

===

cedar pt nursery v ufw

---

https://www.wdbj7.com/2021/04/27/four-republicans-vie-for-virginia-ag-nomination/

ROANOKE, Va. (WDBJ) - The 17 Republicans running for statewide office are now in the final stretch of their nomination fight.

Delegates to the party’s unassembled convention will vote a week from Saturday. Between now and then, WDBJ7 will highlight the campaigns and candidates, starting with the Republicans who hope to become Virginia’s next Attorney General.

We caught up with all four in northern Virginia, at a meeting of the Loudon County Republican Women’s Club.

The field of Republican candidates for Attorney General includes Leslie Haley, Jason Miyares, Chuck Smith and Jack White.

Haley is a member of the Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors, and a practicing attorney with extensive experience in legal ethics and corporate law.

“I am running for Attorney General because this is an executive position, and we need an executive,” Haley said Friday night. “And we need an Attorney General who is going to be the Attorney General for the citizens of Virginia and not the Attorney General for the party.”

Leslie Haley for Attorney General

Miyares is a member of the House of Delegates representing Virginia Beach, and he’s a former prosecutor.

“This is Virginia’s top cop. I’ve prosecuted over 600 criminal cases,” Miyares said. “It’s critically important that as we have this criminal first, victim last mindset in Richmond, that we have a prosecutor in that position.”

Jason Miyares for Attorney General

Chuck Smith is a veteran of six years in the Marine Corps and 20 as a U.S. Navy lawyer. And now, he’s in private practice in eastern Virginia.

“Never before in the history of Virginia have the rights of man, the freedoms of Americans been more at stake,” Smith said. “If there was ever a time that we get back to constitutional principles, that time is now.”

Chuck Smith for Attorney General

Jack White is a graduate of West Point and an Army veteran. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and now practices law in northern Virginia.

“What we need right now is a warrior for our freedoms,” White told the audience, “not just somebody who can scream about it, but somebody who knows how to do it.”

Jack White for Attorney General

And that’s just a glimpse of the choices Republican delegates will make May 8. We will also highlight the Lieutenant Governor’s race, and profile each of the candidates for Governor, with stories this week and next.

---

wiki

Toby Jay Heytens (born December 24, 1975)^[1] is an American attorney and law professor who serves as the Solicitor General of Virginia.

After graduating from law school, Heytens was a law clerk for Chief Judge Edward R. Becker of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He was Bristow Fellow in the Office of the United States Solicitor General and then clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He next worked at O’Melveny & Myers in Washington, D.C.

Heytens has served as a law professor, first at Cornell Law School, and then at the University of Virginia School of Law.^[2]

On January 9, 2018, Heytens was named Solicitor General of Virginia.^[3] He serves under Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, who was reelected in 2017.

Heytens is also a coach for the University of Virginia's undergraduate mock trial team. The team currently has won national championships in 2006, 2007, and 2017. Recently, in their 2018 season, the team came in 2nd in their division.

Heytens is a possible nominee for the upcoming vacancy on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. ^[4]

===

off bs

The Office of Solicitor General represents the Commonwealth in the Supreme Court of the United States, the Supreme Court of Virginia, and federal circuit courts in non-capital cases that call into question the constitutionality of a state statute or that bear on sensitive policies of the Commonwealth. The Office also assists other Divisions of the Office of Attorney General with constitutional and appellate issues.

Bio

Toby Heytens has been Virginia's Solicitor General since February 2018. He previously spent eight years as a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, where he co-directed the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, coached the three-time national champion undergraduate trial advocacy team, and received an All-University Teaching Award. Before that, Toby worked at the United States Department of Justice’s Office of the Solicitor General and at an international law firm in Washington, D.C. Toby is a former law clerk to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Chief Judge Edward R. Beckerand a graduate of Macalester College and the University of Virginia School of Law. He has argued ten cases before the United States Supreme Court.

===

===

https://www.the GUK .com/us-news/2020/apr/18/coronavirus-americans-protest-stay-at-home

no lnx many pix

Thousands of Americans backed by rightwing donors gear up for protests

Conservative activists to demand governors lift stay-home orders – and movement has been driven by wealthy conservative groups

Adam Gabbatt

@adamgabbatt

Sat 18 Apr 2020 06.00 EDT...

Many of the rallies have been inspired by a protest at the Michigan state capitol.

Many of the rallies have been inspired by a protest at the Michigan state capitol. Photograph: Matthew Dae Smith/AP

Thousands of people are preparing to attend protests across the US in the coming days, as a rightwing movement against stay-at-home orders, backed by wealthy conservative groups and promoted by Donald Trump, continues to take hold.

Conservative activists are demanding governors lift orders designed to stop the spread of the coronavirus, despite the recommendations of public health officials. Trump, who has clashed with Democratic governors over how soon to reopen the US economy, tweeted his support on Friday, in an unprecedented endorsement of civil disobedience by a sitting president.

Many of the planned rallies have been inspired by a protest at the Michigan state capitol on Wednesday, which was attended by thousands.

2:09

Armed protesters demand an end to Michigan's coronavirus lockdown orders – video

Yet while organisers claim the protests are grassroots- and people-driven, a closer look reveals a movement driven by traditional rightwing groups, including one funded by the family of Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos.

The rallies have drawn comparisons to the Tea Party movement, which sprang into life in 2009 following the election of Barack Obama and was driven in part by Americans for Prosperity, a group founded by rightwing donors Charles and David Koch.

As with the Tea Party, the anti-stay-at-home movement has been promoted by a rightwing media eager for the economy to reopen, including Fox News which on Friday aired a segment on protests in Virginia, Michigan and Minnesota. Two minutes later, Trump tweeted to his 77.4 million followers the need to “liberate” those states.

1:40

'They seem very responsible to me': Trump defends anti-lockdown protesters- video

A majority of Americans support the lockdowns, with a Pew Research Center poll finding that 66% are concerned state governments will lift restrictions on public activity too quickly. But protests, helped by media coverage, have spread around the country.

The two groups behind the “operation gridlock” rally in Michigan on Wednesday have ties to the Republican party and the Trump administration.

The Michigan Freedom Fund, which said it was a co-host of the rally, has received more than $500,000 from the DeVos family, regular donors to rightwing groups.

The other host, the Michigan Conservative Coalition, was founded by Matt Maddock, now a Republican member of the state house of representatives. The MCC also operates under the name Michigan Trump Republicans, and in January held an event featuring several members of the Trump campaign.

“Absolutely the Michigan event was a huge inspiration and it was a huge success,” said Evie Harris, organizer of a ReOpen Maryland protest planned for the state capitol on Saturday.

“That was the model for our event.”

Thousands drove to the Michigan state capitol in Lansing, while the Michigan Freedom Fund purchased Facebook advertising to promote the rally. Protesters, many waving Trump campaign signs, honked their horns and chanted for Governor Gretchen Whitmer to end the stay-at-home rules.

The protest was covered exhaustively by the rightwing media.Harris said her Facebook following grew from “700-800 people” to more than 15,000 members following the Michigan rally, inspiring her to organize “Operation Gridlock Annapolis” for Saturday.

Harris said her group had support from some elected officials in Maryland, but declined to name them.

While ReOpen Maryland might not have funding from rightwing advocacy groups, it appears to be linked to at least four other “reopen” organizations.

“Government mandating sick people to stay home is called quarantine,” ReOpen Maryland said. “However, the government mandating healthy citizens to stay home, forcing businesses and churches to close is called tyranny.”

That text is identical to text on Facebook pages calling for rallies in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Virginia. ReOpen Virginiaaims to hold its own “gridlock” rally on Wednesday – again inspired by the conservative-funded Michigan event.

Despite ReOpen Virginia billing itself as a “grassroots group of people and small business owners”, founder Kristen Lynne Hall said the idea for the protest came from the organizers of the “Lobby Day” demonstration earlier this year.

That demonstration was organized by the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a gun rights group that has donated tens of thousands of dollars to politicians.

Hall, who said Candace Owens, a rightwing activist and favorite of Trump, had been in touch to discuss the event, said the president’s tweet about “liberating” Virginia was “great”.

“It could be spreading the movement,” she said. “Any support is appreciated right now.”

A decade ago, the Tea Party movement billed itself as “grass roots”, despite receiving money from the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity and the conservative organization FreedomWorks.

Jenny Beth Martin, who founded the Tea Party Patriots group, promoted this week’s Michigan protest. The Tea Party Patriots also supported the protest, in messages to its 200,000 Twitter followers.

Matthew Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog, said the similarities between the Tea Party and ReOpen movements went further, with rightwing media boosting both.

Fox News ran favorable coverage of the Michigan rally and hosts including Laura Ingraham and Jeanine Pirro endorsed the protest.

“Fox gave the Tea Party a phenomenal amount of attention and promotion,” Gertz said. “It really sort of boot-strapped it to another level, and made it a political force, and we see something similar happening with these anti-stay-at-home order movements.”

Gertz said he was not “simply” concerned with “the conservatives having a strong election the next time out”.

“It’s a real chance for devastating consequences with regard to the coronavirus,” he said.

==

===

aha: ~ stay@home is a hub

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2020/05/05/facebook-go-platform-organizing-protests-against-social-distancing

no pix lnx

Facebook Is Go-To Platform For Organizing Protests Against Social Distancing

May 05, 2020

Hatewatch Staff

As COVID-19 continues to pose a lethal threat worldwide, fringe, right-wing activists are using Facebook to mobilize protests of stay-at-home orders in several states.

In a review of Facebook event pages, Hatewatch identified more than 50 rallies from April 13 through May 1. The event pages are being set up all across the nation regardless of which political party controls the state house.

Facebook has become the social media platform of choice for far-right organizers and activists who engage in protests against social distancing.

“Unless government prohibits the event during this time, we allow it to be organized on Facebook,” a spokesperson for Facebook told Hatewatch via email.

The majority of these rallies run afoul of recommendations from health experts. They allow extremists, however, to reinforce the spread of far-right conspiracy theories and disinformation about COVID-19.

In Lansing, Michigan, hundreds of protesters rallied Thursday as Republican House legislators voted to not extend Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s state of emergency. The American Patriot Rally event, organized by theMichigan United for Liberty group, called for the reopening of local businesses.

The rally first spread through Facebook before the platform decided to pull the event page. Late Thursday, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the state capital building, ignoring social distancing recommendations. In some cases, demonstrators carried firearms and were seen peddling QAnon slogans and COVID-19 conspiracies.

Alex Jones

Alex Jones, radio host and creator of the website InfoWars, left, shakes hands with a demonstrator during a "You Can't Close America" rally outside the Texas State Capitol in Austin on April 18. (Photo by Alex Scott/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Antigovernment figures such as Alex Jones are capitalizing on these gatherings to advance the message that federal institutions can’t be trusted. In the days leading up to an April 18 rally in Austin, Texas, hosted by Infowars, promotional content was circulated on Facebook. Once on the ground, Jones accused the Texas state government of enacting “martial law” and told attendees, “We don’t live in fear of some made up virus. We know the globalists and the media are the enemy.” In far-right circles, the term “globalist” is frequently used as an antisemitic slur.

PMAZ flier

A flyer for the Patriot’s Day Rally circulates on Patriot Movement AZ’s Facebook page.

Similarly, in Phoenix, Arizona, the hate group Patriot Movement AZ shared “Patriots' Day Rally” flyers and memes in the lead-up to the April 20 rally in Phoenix. Although the group frequently dabbles in anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, the content shared aligned with common antigovernment talking points. In one instance, a member of the group’s Facebook page who goes by Brent Backus shared an image stating: “Quarantine is when you resist the movement of sick people. Tyranny is when you restrict the movement of healthy people.”

Militia organizations also did their part to vilify government institutions. TheSouth Carolina Light Foot militia shared details on their page for the “Drive to Thrive SC” gridlock event. Similar to other extremist groups, the South Carolina Light Foot Militia also used its Facebook page to rile up its base ahead of the April 24 event.

“Maybe we can put all the sick people in boxcars and take them to someplace safe, oh wait…” read one of the memes in an attempt to equate the government’s response to COVID-19 to that of life under the rule of Nazi Germany.

badge star of davis yellow as "pass"]

The South Carolina Light Foot militia stoked fears recently as they claimed yellow badge-style patches are in the near future for vaccinated individuals.

Other militia leaders such as John Cody, state commanding officer of the South Carolina Light Foot Militia Special Response Team, jumped on the bandwagon using Facebook to advertise a national May Day Rally.

Cody, who uses the codename “Hawkeye,” was a key organizer for the Jan. 29 Militias March on Richmond rally. The march, which was organized mainly on Facebook, was scheduled to coincide with the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) gun event. VCDL was hoping to put on a show of force for gun owners who stood in opposition to state bills that were aiming to adopt new gun restrictions. Cody’s rally ultimately helped bring together a number of right-wing militias with established gun rights organizations.

Cody post

Militia leader John Cody recently circulated two different flyers on Facebook for his May Day rallies.

Along with Cody, Virginia state Sen. Amanda Chase, R-Chesterfield, has been rallying her supporters to protest. Chase, who was involved in a number of controversial incidents earlier in the year and was subsequently ousted from her local GOP committee, has been sympathetic to far right causes. She made a personal appearance at the January VCDL gun rally where she joined several antigovernment militias in an attempt to protest new gun legislation.

Amanda Chase

Virginia state Senator Amanda Chase at work in the statehouse in Richmond. (Photo by Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Chase recently got on Facebook and shared details for several rallies against social distancing scheduled in Richmond, encouraging her supporters to attend, saying “Share with those who believe in Liberty, Freedom and pursuit of Prosperity, …not liberalism.”

Kayla Gogarty, a Media Matters senior researcher who has been tracking these rallies since they first appeared on Facebook, told Hatewatch: “We found that a lot of these Facebook groups and a lot of these events are including members of local militias and members of some local anti-vax groups. We’ve seen a lot of far-right figures attend some of the events like the Proud Boys. We’ve seen pro-gun activists and antigovernment extremists at these rallies and some local government officials as well.”

A Hatewatch analysis of Facebook posts earlier last month aligned with much of what Gogarty has seen in recent weeks, with the platform being a hotbed for COVID-19 misinformation.

Facebook touts response as rallies materialize

As first noted by the tech website The Verge, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is still heavily touting the billion-dollar company’s projects aimed at helping minimize the spread and impact of COVID-19. Facebook has donated $100 million to small businesses in a gesture made to help them through trying times. The social media company has alsoteamed up with Carnegie Mellon University to roll out a global symptoms survey to Facebook users in an effort to track COVID-19 growth. These initiatives come as Facebook is simultaneously failing to provide a clear solution for countering the spread of disinformation and anti-public health organizing on its own platform.

Owen Shroyer

Infowars host Owen Shroyer arrives at the Texas State Capitol building on April 18 in Austin. (Photo by Sergio Flores/Getty Images)

In an April 20 interview with ABC News, Zuckerberg emphasized that “the stuff that people are saying that is false around a health emergency like this, can be classified as harmful misinformation that has a risk of leading to imminent physical danger and we’ll just take that kind of content down.”

Complicating matters is the fact that not every state and country has instructed citizens to stay home. According to The New York Times, “42 states, three counties, 10 cities, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico” have adopted stay at home orders as of April 28th. This means that if protests occur in states where stay at home orders were never adopted, Facebook faces less pressure to take immediate action.

A general search on Facebook for rally terms such as “liberate” and “reopen” brings up a plethora of groups that oppose social distancing.

The decision to hold off on pulling down content that rails against social distancing undermines the work the company has done to help survey and map the spread of COVID-19. The networking site may have taken down a handful of conspiracy posts, but the antigovernment rhetoric contained in the rally posts has the potential to expose people to greater amounts of misinformation.

==

===

an 420

voting Rights Roundup: VA Dems expand voting access and reform redistricting in historic session

===

===

south not doing well re covid

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/god-dont-like-stupid-louisiana-church-shamed-for-defying-pandemic-rules-with-tuesday-night-service/

va rev rip?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/christian-pastor-who-thought-covid-19-is-just-mass-hysteria-among-the-first-in-virginia-to-die-from-virus/

===

===

no lnx

https://www.ecowatch.com/david-schnare-transportation-climate-initiative-2645380459.html

Dana Drugmand

Opponents of a regional proposal to curb transportation sector emissions in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic are using a number of deceptive tactics to attack and criticize the Transportation and Climate Initiative. Groups tied to the oil industry have pointed to misleading studies, deployed questionable public opinion polling and circulated an open letter in opposition.

In Virginia, a conservative think tank is now touting a biased analysis, dismissed by critics as misleading "scare tactics," authored by anti-environmental attorney David Schnare, that questions Virginia's legal authority to participate in the regional program.

The Transportation and Climate Initiative aims to reduce carbon emissions from on-road vehicles by up to 25 percent over 10 years through a cap-and-invest model, whereby fuel suppliers and distributors would purchase allowances allocated under the cap, and proceeds would be invested into clean transportation initiatives. The program is modeled after the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative for the power sector, which is expected to result in CO2 emission reductions of 45 percent below 2005 levels by this year. But critics of the TCI proposal, many of whom also opposed RGGI, claim that it will do little to cut emissions and is just a scheme to raise gas prices, equivalent to a gas tax.

According to a legal analysis on Virginia's participation in the program, published by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy, "TCI proposes rationing gasoline and diesel fuel sales and initiating a per gallon gas tax hike." David Schnare, who wrote the analysis, claims that the program would impose not a fee but a tax and therefore requires authorization by the state legislature. Virginia's governor, Schnare says, does not have unilateral authority to join TCI. Schnare also threatens to sue should Virginia attempt to join TCI without authorization by the legislature.

"We hope the Governor simply chooses to withdraw," Schnare said. "But any effort to impose TCI unilaterally without the General Assembly will certainly be met with appropriate legal action."

"Nothing in the TCI program would ration gasoline and motor fuels. TCI would simply put a limit on climate pollution," said Mark Kresowik, eastern region deputy director of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign, emphasizing that TCI is not a tax by any legal standard.

David Schnare's Long History Attacking Climate Science and Defending Fossil Fuel Interests

Schnare is currently the Director of the Center for Environmental Stewardship at the Thomas Jefferson Institute, and both he and TJI are part of a larger network linked with fossil fuel interests that work against climate and environmental protection policies.

The Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy is a member of the State Policy Network, a Koch-backed web of right-wing think tanks promoting climate science denial and other policy positions that benefit corporate donors. The Jefferson Institute has received funding from Donors Capital Fund ($214,450) and Donors Trust ($5,000), anonymous funding vehicles supporting a number of organizations that promote conservative and free enterprise interests. As DeSmog has noted, "the groups and projects given grants from DCF and DT are among the most active in questioning the link between fossil fuel emissions and climate change and blocking attempts to legislate against greenhouse gas emissions." The Jefferson Institute is one such group, and was called out by name by Senate Democrats in 2016 in a series of speeches denouncing climate change denial from 32 organizations with links to fossil-fuel interests.

Schnare is a former EPA scientist and attorney and initially was a member of President Trump's EPA transition team. He is affiliated with climate denial groups like the Heartland Institute, and was a speaker at the 2017 Heartland Institute "America First Energy Conference," where he discussed how to challenge the EPA's 2009 endangerment finding that serves as the basis for regulating greenhouse gas emissions.

Schnare has a history of harassing climate scientists by suing universities to get access to the scientists' emails. In 2011, he unsuccessfully sued the University of Virginia to try to obtain Michael Mann's emails. As DeSmog previously reported, Schnare was forced to pay out $630,000 from a dark money group he co-founded with Christopher Horner, the Free Market Environmental Law Clinic. The payout resulted from a heated legal dispute in which Schnare is alleged to have used FMELC as his personal piggy bank.

Schnare's Reports Use Disinformation as “Scare Tactics”

Given this background, it is not surprising that Schnare and the Thomas Jefferson Institute are railing against the proposed Transportation and Climate Initiative. TJI and Schnare have published several misleading analyses of the program claiming it is a "carbon car tax" and would be "all pain and no gain," claims that are simply untrue. The latest legal analysis is a continuation of Schnare making these unfounded arguments. For example, Schnare's claim that TCI "proposes rationing gasoline and diesel fuel sales" is blatantly false, as sources familiar with the program told DeSmog.

"This is a pollution reduction program," said Bruce Ho, senior advocate in the climate and clean energy program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "The type of policy [Schnare and TJI] are describing in their paper is not the policy that states are actually proposing."

"The oil industry and its allies are going heavy on the scare tactics right now," added Morgan Butler, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center. "TCI is not being designed to ration gas, but rather to help move us beyond it by investing revenues from the program in making cleaner and healthier transportation options more available to everyone."

Schnare's claim that Virginia's governor cannot unilaterally join TCI is also not accurate. As Kresowik explained, the governor does have authority to sign on to an agreement or memorandum of understanding (MOU), and then the legislature would have to act to implement the program in the state.

"The governor can absolutely sign the memorandum of understanding and move forward with the other states," Kresowik said.

"The hand waving in this paper that Virginia is doing something that's not allowed is just wrong," added Ho. "Neither Virginia nor any other TCI jurisdiction has proposed skirting those legal requirements. They've been very upfront that they are going to go through all of the legally required processes within states."

Ho said that Schnare's entire analysis is disingenuous, as it mischaracterizes what the TCI program is actually proposing. "It's a clear case of fear-mongering, setting up a straw man argument that is just not reflective of reality," he said.

Schnare's case against TCI runs counter to even oil giant BP's recent endorsement of the program. BP America Chairman and President Susain Dio, in a piece published last week in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, urged Virginia Governor Ralph Northam and the General Assembly to move forward with both TCI and RGGI. "While a national carbon pricing program would be the gold standard, state and regional plans can play a critical role now," Dio writes. "And we can't wait." BP's support of TCI falls inline with the company's recent announcement that it will no longer lobby against policies that regulate or limit carbon pollution. Though the sincerity of BP's statements are not yet clear, the company's surprise public support of TCI indirectly rebuts and counters both pieces of Schnare's flawed analysis.

Reposted with permission from DeSmog.

Koch Network Took Credit for Dakota Access, Keystone XL and ... ›

Legal analysis: Governor cannot join climate agreement without ... ›

oil and gas oil fossil fuels emissions transportation climate science climate crisis

==

==

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/jerry-falwell-jr-just-unmasked-conservatism-and-we-should-seriously-thank-him-for-it/

no lnx

Jerry Falwell Jr. just unmasked conservatism — and we should seriously thank him for it

Written by John Stoehr, The Editorial Board March 15, 2020

I suppose we owe Jerry Falwell Jr. a debt of gratitude. I’m serious.

Falwell is the son of the late Jerry Falwell, the man most responsible for bringing fundamentalist Christianity out of the political wilderness during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Junior, along with Franklin Graham, himself a scion of a religious dynasty, is perhaps the president’s greatest champion among white evangelical Christians.

He appeared on “Fox & Friends” yesterday.Among other things, he accused Donald Trump’s enemies, including the press, of hyping COVID-19, the new strain of the coronavirus spreading around the world, panicking global markets and closing down entertainment and cultural events here and elsewhere. He, like Tom Cotton, the fascist senator from Arkansas, believes the disease outbreak can be blamed on totalitarian regimes in the east. For Cotton, that’s China. For Falwell, that’s North Korea. (While Falwell was on air, the president announced a state of national emergency related to the outbreak, undermining his and Cotton’s search for a scapegoat for his sake.)

Falwell’s demagoguery isn’t what we should be thankful for. What we should be thankful for is his confessing, without appearing to know it, that a pillar of “principled conservatism” in the United States is no pillar at all. Not in practice. Once you see that this pillar rests on a bed of sand, rather than constitutional bedrock, you start seeing other “conservative principles” do, too. “States’ rights,” “gun rights,” “the right to life” and even “religious freedom” are nearly always about something other than what they seem to be. Falwell and his ideological confederates can’t be honest about it, though. If they were, they’d lose. Dishonesty, fraudulence and bad faith are central to their aims.

What would Jesus do? Not that.

Here’s some context, courtesy of the Christian Science Monitor (my italics):

“As in many states, residents in parts of rural, conservative Virginia say they seem to inhabit an increasingly different daily reality than that of urban and suburban districts. That feeling of separation was compounded by last November’s Democratic sweep of the state’s elected offices. Now residents in Frederick County are mulling a radical proposal: seceding from Virginia and joining neighboring West Virginia.”

Apparently Falwell is part of the effort. He’s the head of something called “Vaxit,” according to Fox & Friends. Whether that’s a real organization I have no idea, but that’s not what I’m most interested in. I’m most interested in expressing gratitude to the good reverend for admitting that “states’ rights” have nothing to do with conservatism.

Think about it.

If the principle of “states’ rights” meant what conservatives have said it meant to them, not one of them, not Jerry Falwell Jr. nor anyone calling him or herself a “principled conservative,” would dare suggest that a county secede from a state. If states are sovereign, as conservatives have alleged since Strom Thurmond ran as a Dixiecrat in 1948, calling for a county to secede from a state is traitorous. If “states’ rights” are as sacred as conservatives have said they are, the idea of secession is an abomination.

In saying counties should leave the state as casually as ordering unsweet tea with his burger and fries, the Rev. Falwell told us without knowing he was telling us that conservatism in theory is authoritarianism in practice. It cannot and will not tolerate democratic change, despite change coming with the blessing of the majority. If the majority rules, Falwell and his confederates will abandon commitments to democracy.

Once you abandon democracy—once you open the door to treason—there’s no end in sight. Once it seceded, “the Confederacy began to deny states’ rights,” wrote James W. Loewen in Lies My Teacher Told Me. “Jefferson Davis denounced states’ rights as destructive to the Confederacy. The mountainous counties in western Virginia bolted to the Union. Confederate troops had to occupy east Tennessee to keep it from emulating West Virginia. Winn Parish, Louisiana, refused to secede from the Union. Winston County, Alabama, declared itself the Free State of Winston. Unionist farmers and woodsmen in Jones County, Mississippi, declared the Free State of Jones.”

By February 1864, Davis despaired: “Public meetings of treasonable character, in the name of state sovereignty, are being held.” Thus states’ rights as an ideology was contradictory and could not mobilize the white South for the long haul.

What mobilized the white South was the defense of slavery. Falwell and his new breed of confederate aren’t doing that, of course, but the spirit of treason, if not the act of treason, is the same. Conservatives tell us they prefer slow and gradual change, and stand united against radical attempts to bring it swiftly. But that’s not their true face. Conservatism in practice is a radical ideology reserving the right to betray its stated principles, and to betray community and brotherhood, if it doesn’t get what it wants.

Thanks to Jerry Falwell Jr., that’s now easy to see.

==

==

klare

the armed forces as climate mediators

The military’s approach to climate change could bridge the divide between believers and doubters. People who assert that protecting endangered habitats and species is trivial next to health and economic problems, and that society has time to tackle whatever threats may develop, might be persuaded to take action when they hear from respected generals and admirals that the nation’s security is at stake.

This is already happening in some communities, such as Norfolk, Virginia, where base commanders and local officials have found common ground in addressing the area’s extreme vulnerability to sea level rise and hurricane-induced flooding.

Similarly, congressional Republicans – many of whom have long opposed addressing climate change – are starting to issue plans to curb it. Framing climate policy in national security terms might help win conservative support.

The armed forces continue to plan for conventional conflicts abroad, while recognizing that climate change will affect their ability to perform their combat duties. They must, like it or not, take steps to overcome warming’s damaging impacts. In my view, it’s a message all Americans need to heed.

===

==

220

Voting Rights Roundup: Virginia Dems advance redistricting reformanhttps://www.alternet.org/2020/02/voting-rights-roundup-virginia-dems-advance-redistricting-reform/

===

terry mca replaced by

https://www.governor.virginia.gov/newsroom/all-releases/2018/april/headline-822684-en.html

==

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/neo-nazis-virginia-gun-rally_n_5e221a24c5b63211761391ad

no lnx pix vid

6 Suspected Neo-Nazis Have Now Been Arrested In Lead-Up To Virginia Gun Rally

The men are all alleged members of The Base, a white supremacist group that hopes to start a race war.

By Sebastian Murdock

George Bush Praises ImmigrationGeorge Bush Praises Immigration

Six neo-Nazis have been arrested just days before a gun rally in Virginia is expected to draw thousands, including far-right extremists.

Three Georgia men were arrested Friday on charges of conspiracy to commit murder and participating in a criminal street gang as members of The Base, a white supremacist group that seeks to start a race war.The suspects are Luke Austin, Michael Helterbrand and Jacob Kaderli, The Associated Press reported.

:{

}:

The men are accused of seeking out antifascists to kill, and were planning to “overthrow the government and murder a Bartow County couple,” the Floyd County Police Department said in a statement.

Left to right: Luke Austin Lane, Jacob Kaderli and Michael Helterbrand are all suspected neo-Nazis who allegedly planned to t

FLOYD COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT]

Left to right: Luke Austin Lane, Jacob Kaderli and Michael Helterbrand are all suspected neo-Nazis who allegedly planned to target and kill antifascists.

Atlanta Antifascists, a group that works to confront and expose fascists throughout Georgia, told HuffPost the news of the arrests “underscores that organized white supremacists remain a threat to our communities.”

“Targeting people as members of our group has become a favorite pastime of violent white supremacists,” Atlanta Antifascists said. “Many of these people are not even connected to organized antifascism at all — they simply have become caught in the crosshairs. This is part of a concerted attempt by fascists to create a general attitude of terror and paranoia. We extend our solidarity to all members of the community targeted by white supremacy and fascism and encourage everyone to watch out for each other and keep each other safe.”

The arrests came a day after three other suspected neo-Nazis affiliated with The Base were arrested in Maryland. One of the men, Patrik Mathews, fled Canada earlier last year after his white supremacy ties were discovered. A former reservist in the Canadian Army, Mathews trained as a combat engineer and is an explosives expert.

Patrik Mathews fled Canada after his white supremacy ties were discovered.

RCMP

Patrik Mathews fled Canada after his white supremacy ties were discovered.]

Authorities said Mathews is a top recruiter for the terrorist group and was allegedly planning to start violence at Monday’s gun rally in Virginia along with accomplices Brian Lemley and William Bilbrough IV. Police found guns and more than 1,500 rounds of ammunition during the arrests.

Monday’s rally in Richmond is expected to draw thousands of people who oppose recent gun control bills introduced in the state legislature, including one that would require universal background checks for firearm purchase and another that would limit people from buying more than one handgun per month.

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) declared a temporary state of emergency on Wednesday banning all guns from the state Capitol grounds amid threats of violence from far-right extremists.

“We have received credible intelligence from our law enforcement agencies of threats of violence surrounding the demonstration planned for Monday, January 20,” Northam said in a tweet. “This includes extremist rhetoric similar to what has been seen before major incidents, such as Charlottesville in 2017.”

Organizers of the rally, anti-gun control group Virginia Citizens Defense League, falsely accused Democratic leaders of inviting violent groups to the rally following the temporary ban on guns.

“[Democrats] would love for it to degenerate to ‘violence, rioting, and insurrection’ in order to smear gun owners,” the group said in a statement. “Has the Democrat leadership actually invited violent groups to attend for the purpose of disrupting our peaceful assembly?”

Hours after the statement, three of the suspected neo-Nazis were arrested. The VCDL did not respond to a request for comment.

==

https://www.mediamatters.org/fake-news/white-nationalist-created-hoax-about-gun-confiscation-leading-calls-violence

semiotic?

no lnx graf twt

A white nationalist created a hoax about gun confiscation that is leading to calls for violence on social media and message boards

Special PROGRAMS

GUNS & PUBLIC SAFETY

WRITTEN BY ALEX KAPLAN

PUBLISHED 12/18/19 10:17 AM EST

A noted white nationalist fabricated a claim about guns and Virginia’s governor that has spread in the past week throughout social media and on far-right message boards. The hoax has drawn tens of thousands of engagements and views, and some have issued calls to violence in response.

Following the Democratic takeover of the Virginia state legislature in November’s elections, the state’s Democratic governor, Ralph Northam, said he would reintroduce multiple gun safety bills. In response, multiple counties in the state declared themselves “Second Amendment sanctuaries,” adopting largely symbolic resolutions that say they will not enforce what they deem to be unconstitutional gun laws.

On December 13, Rep. Donald McEachin (D-VA) suggested that Northam use the state’s National Guard to enforce the bills if they become law.That same day, the Twitter account for the Virginia National Guard tweeted that it had “not received any requests from the Governor, or anyone on his staff, about serving in a law enforcement role related to any proposed legislation” and encouraging residents to “be patient while we allow our elected officials to work through the legislative process.” Northam himself a day earlier had said that there would be “consequences” if localities did not enforce the law, but he said only that he would “cross that bridge if and when we get to it.”

Also on December 13, Hal Turner, a white nationalist radio host who has a history of spreading false claims and hoaxes, posted on his website that Northam had “allegedly ordered a small cadre of staffers to begin the process for determining how to cut off electricity, telephones/ FAXES, Cellular phones AND DATA, as well as the Internet, in areas where he plans to send Virginia National Guard Troops to forcibly seize guns when the Democrat legislature convenes in January.” Turner further claimed that the order “was allegedly given to a very small and trusted group of staffers, some of whom it turns out, do not agree (at all) with this idea.”

Hal Turner Virginia hoax

Over the next few days, the hoax spread on multiple Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, Instagram accounts, and multiple YouTube channels, some of which are proponents of the QAnon conspiracy theory.Users claimed Northam’s supposed response was “why the founding fathers put in the 2nd amendment,” calling for “patriots around the country” to “go after [these] anti-gunners with extreme prejudice,” and calling for “troops [to] remove this traitor from his position.” According to the tracking tool BuzzSumo, posts linking to the hoax article received more than 25,000 engagements on Facebook and Twitter combined.

Twitter Virginia hoax1

Facebook Virginia hoax1

Facebook Virginia hoax4

YouTube Virginia hoax2

Additionally, the hoax circulated throughout multiple message boards, including pro-gun forum AR15.com, where a user asked if there was “any truth” to the hoax and users said it could cause a “civil war.” Another message board that saw traffic on the hoax was the backup site for thesubreddit “r/The_Donald,” where users called the “new rumor” a reason to “plan, act, purchase, train appropriately” and an “absolute necessary step to guarantee full scale revolution in the state ending in executions for all government officials.”

The Donald subreddit backup site Virginia hoax

The hoax was also repeatedly mentioned on 4chan’s “/pol/” message board, where multiple users posted images of the headline or the text of Turner’s article and responded by writing that they were “glad to be fighting age” and urging others to “take care of this faggot” because “americans killed a president for much less.”

4chan Virginia hoax1]

By December 17,multiple white nationalist channels on Telegramwere also posting the hoax, via text from Turner’s site or from another radio host and QAnon supporter, John B. Wells, who had cited Turner and posted the same text on his site on December 15. One of those Telegram channels was that of Paul Nehlen, a former congressional candidate who ran against former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) and who has openly expressed white nationalist views and issued calls to violence.

Telegram Virginia hoax2]

[

IN THIS ARTICLE

Fake News

fake news

Facebook

Facebook-MMFA-Tag.png

4chan

4chan-MMFA-Tag.pngMORE

50 COMMENTS

Related

How a total fabrication connecting George Soros' son to the whistleblower went from the underbelly of the internet to Rep. Steve King

11/15/19 11:57 AM EST

A new baseless conspiracy theory about Rep. Ilhan Omar can be traced back to far-right message boards

09/09/19 2:26 PM EDT

How bots and far-right figures spread a lie about Beto O'Rourke and the Odessa shooting

09/04/19 1:52 PM EDT

Media Matters for America

===

===

see massive fail on black lung

In 1974, NIOSH first called for silica exposure limits twice as strict as those in place for coal miners and other workers. But it wasn’t until the 1990s that MSHA and others began to get serious about silica in coal mines.

NPR and FRONTLINE obtained internal memos from the Clinton administration that showed alarm back then about clusters of advanced lung disease among coal miners as young as 40. MSHA sent out alerts to coal mining companies, warning about excessive exposure to silica dust and severe disease among miners. NIOSH again called for a silica exposure limit that would be twice as tough, plus separate regulation of silica, as did a Department of Labor advisory committee.

“We started a national campaign first to raise awareness,” recalled Davitt McAteer, the assistant secretary of labor for mine safety and health from 1994 to 2000.

“And it was that campaign that began to try to go after the silica requirements, raise the silica standard, and start on a separate path to control silica.”

McAteer proposed a major overhaul of the dust samplingsystem, which included other loopholes that permitted excessive exposures and inaccurate measurement of coal mine dust.But the effort encountered stiff opposition from the National Mining Association, the industry’s biggest lobbying group. The group sued over some elements of the plan and won.

“And then we ran out of time,” McAteer says. “And it’s something that’s unfortunate and put a lot of lives at risk.”

Mine dust loopholes

==

NRA’s big loss in Virginia, explained

Gun control groups outspent the nation’s most powerful gun rights organization in its home state.

vox 1119

Virginia Democrats campaigned on their Green New Deal and fighting climate change. And won.

==

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/russian-backed-nra-makes-largest-contribution-ever-to-stop-upcoming-democratic-trifecta/

no lnx

Russian-backed NRA makes ‘largest contribution ever’ to stop impending Democratic trifecta

Written by Daily Kos October 9, 2019

In less than a month, citizens will decide the fate of gubernatorial and legislative elections in five states:  Louisiana, Mississippi, Kentucky, New Jersey, and Virginia.  These states have off-year elections, and the deadline to register to vote ranges from immediate to next week. All are critical elections, but in none of these states are the stakes higher than in Virginia.

Virginia has a Democratic governor who will serve until 2021, but the GOP holds the slimmest majority in the both the House of Delegates and the State Senate. When I say slim, I mean the Dems are just one person shy of winning the majority for each chamber.  The candidates REALLY need your support, not just because the focus has largely been put on just the top tier races, but because the GOP is once again looking to Russia for help.

A Senate report released last week, based on private interviews new emails, showed that the NRA acted as a “foreign asset” for Russia.  The 18-month probe by the Senate Finance Committee revealed that the NRA underwrote political access for Russian nationals Maria Butina and Alexander Torshin, despite their ties to the Kremlin. The Republicans on the FEC blocked all investigations on the NRA’s financial ties to Russia.

Coincidentally, the NRA “just made their largest contribution ever” to a political fund, which happens to be the Virginia House Majority Leader Todd Gilbert’s ‘Majority Leader PAC’.  The GOP happily took the money to distribute amongst VA GOP candidates because they are terrified of Virginia having fair districts drawn next cycle.

I’ve focused before on several House of Delegate races, like this one. Virginia has a bi-partisan resource called the Virginia Public Access Project that gives you a the rundown of all races.  The House of Delegate races for VPAP is here.   So as not to have an extremely long piece, I’ve decided to focus on the VA State Senate.  There are eight competitive races in that chamber, and I’ll focus on each in order of likelihood to flip.

You can click on their name to go to their page. Please volunteer or donate. We can so win this:

John Bell, Senate District 13: Open Seat/Leans Blue. This retired United States Air Force officer has raised a lot of money, and this Northern Virginia district is likeliest to flip. His challenger, Geary Higgins, is a raging racist.  John has endorsements from every major Democrat in Virginia....

==

Cap and trade fails in Va. Now what?

:{

It was supposed to be a crowning moment for cap and trade. Instead, it became the biggest setback for the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative since 2012.

By Benjamin Storrow in Climatewire 7:32 AM EDT

}:

==

icn carbon tax

New Jersey and Virginia

Regulators are moving forward in both New Jersey and Virginia for the states to join RGGI, following the directives of Democratic governors elected in 2017.

For New Jersey, it would be a return to the regional carbon market. One analysis released earlier this year found that the state forfeited tens of millions of dollars in revenue because of Republican Gov. Chris Christie's decision to exit RGGI in 2011—two years after New Jersey helped found the initiative.

Under Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy's directive,the state's Department of Environmental Protection is expected to finalize its proposed cap on carbon emissions by the end of this year, with an eye to approving it in the spring.

Virginia's air pollution control board approved the regulations to implement RGGI for public comment on Oct. 29. The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality is expected to have a public comment period early next year with the rules to be finalized in the spring.

==

https://www.ecowatch.com/cash-buys-elections-and-continued-fossil-fuel-dominance-2619922863.html

Cash Buys Elections—and Continued Fossil Fuel Dominance

By Wenonah Hauter

Last week, the fossil fuel industry successfully squashed several local measures it didn't like—thanks to the more than $100 million it shelled out to oppose them.

Initiatives to rein in fracking failed in Colorado, where the industry spent a whopping $40 million (outspending advocates 40-1) and in San Luis Obispo County, where a measure to ban fracking lost in the face of $8 million in industry cash (proponents of the measure spent only $240,000). An Arizona initiative to mandate 50 percent renewable energy by 2050 failed, thanks to $30 million in energy cash to fight it. And, despite increasingly touting its approval for carbon taxes with modest funding of greenwashing groups like the Climate Leadership Council, the industry spent $30 million to oppose a carbon tax initiative in Washington.

The fossil fuel industry is doing more of the same in many states across the country, including Virginia. A new Food & Water Watch report out now looks at Dominion Energy's outsized influence in the state—how it buys policy, buys elections and squashes renewable energy to further its profits.

One of the ways Dominion buys policy in Virginia is through its multi-million dollar political and lobbying operation. Since 1998, the company has built the infrastructure to buy off policy and is the biggest corporate contributor to political campaigns in Virginia—with its political action committee and employees plowing more than $10 million into Virginia campaign coffers. Whether it's meals, cocktails, sporting tickets or other associated spending, it's repeatedly bought access to policy through the state's elected officials.

Dominion's primary interests have been in pushing policies that ensure they won't be regulated. Between 2017 and 2018, the company increased its lobbying and advertising expenditures 10-fold while pushing to enact a law that would ensure Virginia ratepayers would pay more for polluting fossil energy. It also spent more than $4 million on ads this year promoting its legislative agenda to build out more fossil fuel infrastructure—like the Atlantic Coast Pipeline—and its acquisition of SCANA, a South Carolina utility that brought with it a portfolio of coal- and gas-fired power plants.

Poisonous coal ash and climate pollution aren't Dominion's only toxic legacy in the state: its lobbying machine worked to obstruct clean energy initiatives as well. The company has successfully thwarted popular and progressive energy measures, ensuring, for example, that utilities (like its subsidiary, Virginia Power) would be gatekeepers for community-based solar projects instead of allowing churches and other community organizations to develop their own. This is a move to keep them stuck in the polluting fossil fuel system from which the company extracts great profits that keep them powerful.

And this is just in Virginia. Nationally, Dominion dumped at least $59 million into state and federal political advocacy, including campaign contributions, gifts and lobbying since 1998. In the late 1990s, Dominion joined disgraced energy company Enron in a national fight to deregulate utilities so that they could instead implement a market-based scheme to separate electricity distribution from power generation, essentially taking energy out of the realm of "public good" and into the realm of commodity. We know how well that worked out: Enron went bankrupt from the scheme, a development that also saddled Dominion with nearly $100 million in losses. But the damage had been done for ratepayers nationwide, with the Federal Energy Policy Act of 2005 entrenching the deregulation these companies sought—the same legislation that enshrined the "Halliburton Loophole" into federal law exempting frackers from federal drinking water protections. Dominion is also investing in infrastructure to connect its facilities to fracked gas from Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

Industry influence can mean the difference between a renewable future or more climate-throttling fossil fuel infrastructure. In Virginia, local advocates are taking the fight to Dominion's doorstep—and their cronies in the statehouse. We're joining with Virginia NAACP, Virginia Interfaith Power and Light, People Demanding Action, Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy, League of United Latin American Citizens—Richmond, and others to pass legislation just introduced by state delegates Sam Rasoul and Elizabeth Guzman to transition the state to 100 percent renewables by 2035.

We're ready for the fight ahead because we have no choice but to ensure that Dominion, and the industry as a whole, doesn't win. We must begin the transition off of fossil fuels immediately if we want to protect our communities and avert the worst of catastrophic climate change ahead.

Wenonah Hauter is executive director of Food & Water Watch and Food & Water Action.

==

==

desmog

Five employees of the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) have financial interests in Dominion, the state’s largest utility and energy company. The officials are involved, in one way or another, in permitting or overseeing the company’s activities, ranging from water discharges to emissions controls on power plants.

According to financial disclosures filed with the state’s ethics council, four of them directly own stock in the company, while the wife of a fifth official works for Dominion. Read more....

===

https://www.ecowatch.com/mountain-valley-pipeline-construction-halted-2593256634.html

FERC Halts Work on Mountain Valley Pipeline

On Friday, the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) ordered work stopped on the controversial Mountain Valley Pipeline that would carry fracked natural gas along a 303-mile route from West Virginia to Virginia, Reuters reported.

The order is the consequence of a legal victory for pipeline opponents July 27, in which three federal appeals judges revoked two permits for the pipeline to cross the Jefferson National Forest, ruling that the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management had not properly reviewed the project before issuing the permits, The Washington Post reported. The judges ordered the agencies to redo the permits.

"Should the agencies authorize alternative routes, (Mountain Valley) may need to revise substantial portions of the project route across non-federal lands, possibly requiring further authorizations and environmental review," FERC said in explaining its decision to halt construction, Reuters reported.

TheSierra Club, one of the environmental groups that brought the suit against the pipeline, applauded the FERC's decision.

==

http://www.ecowatch.com/virginia-mcauliffe-climate-change-2411264830.html

==

VIRGINIA

We have a moral obligation to act on climate change to protect our future generations. Despite the overwhelming

scientific consensus and high costs to taxpayers, Virginia has seven resident deniers who have taken $1,265,624 in

career dirty energy contributions. In comparison, the remaining six members of the Virginia congressional delegation

have only taken $304,532. The state has suffered eight climate-related disaster declarations since 2011, and parts of the

state are already suffering from the impacts of sea-level rise. Below are quotes from six of Virginia’s resident climate

deniers who refuse to believe there is a problem to address:

Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA-07): “If there’s been any constant in human history, it’s been climate change. The real question is

the severity of that and the involvement of human causes in all of that.” [ThinkProgress, December 7, 2009]

Rep. J. Randy Forbes (R-VA-04): “Elected officials need to depend on experts in the field to make determinations on the

degree to which our planet is warming, and there is evidence among scientists and researchers pointing in both

directions.” [Richmond Times-Dispatch, July 4, 2010]

Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA-06): “There is no doubt that the earth’s climate is changing. The earth and its climate are

dynamic, and have changed throughout history even without human activity. We have reached a point where some

experts concur that the earth is once again warming. Regardless of the reason, the debate over climate change should

remind us that we should be good stewards of our planet.” [Richmond Times-Dispatch, July 4, 2010]

Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-VA-09): “[Climate change] led to the Vikings dominating Europe for several hundred years.”

[Climate Change Hearing, March 8, 2011]

Rep. Robert Hurt (R-VA-05): Rep. Hurt said that Climategate is “scientists who have given us something that is not true.

It is faulty information and it has real consequences in the 5th District, in the loss of jobs and in power bills from

Appalachian Power Co.” [Daily Progress, February 28, 2010]

Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA-01): “We must recognize that these climactic cycles of heating and cooling have been going on

well before man appeared on earth.” [Richmond Times-Dispatch, July 4, 2010]

===

promote to primary: cooch, state climatologist, U va, mann etc. GMU, lots of ppl /orgs in fairfax co and alexandria

gov ultrasound and cooch go down in $ scandal, but Kochs on the make, gillespie eyeing sen seat

alexandria (fairfax) outpost of DC?

---

Charles and David Koch, brothers whose philanthropic and political network has helped fuel a Republican resurgence in the onetime union strongholds of the industrial Midwest, have also stepped up their political activity in the states; they hope to rebound in places like Virginia, where a Democrat won the governorship in 2013, and consolidate earlier victories in states like Michigan and Wisconsin.

===

Category Archives: Virginia

Why ALEC Lied About Failures at Public Schools

Sunday, 04 August 2013

failure of kansas public schools

ALEC vs. Kids: ALEC’s Assault on Public Education. That’s the alarmingly accurate title of a new report that focuses on how the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) education task force has used a state-by-state report card to fabricate failure in state public schools in order to create sales opportunities for their corporate membership. [editor's note:  the ALEC v Kids report is at the end of this post.  We previously posted on the fallout from this report in the Florida media, which you can see here]

That concept is, of course, not new: the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was famously known as No Corporation Left Behind, when instead of delivering equal access to public education to millions of American children, it provided billions of dollars in profits to corporate clients through dubious processes of testing and assessment and supplemental educational services.

The wedding of big business and education benefited many, including Sandy Kress, chief architect of NCLB; Harold McGraw III, textbook publisher; Bill Bennett, former Reagan education secretary; and Neil Bush, the then-president’s youngest brother.

Apparently, ALEC likes that business model.

ALEC – All About Favoring Corporations

ALEC was formed in 1973 by a group of conservative activists who came together to advance a national right wing agenda in state legislatures across the country. They do this by coordinating and connecting corporate special interests, insurance companies, lobbyists, right wing think tanks, the super rich and conservative state legislators.

So it is no surprise that the hallmark of ALEC model legislation is to make conditions as favorable to corporations as possible. The group is behind just about every bad Republican initiative, including union-busting, Voter ID and Stand Your Ground gun laws that helped George Zimmerman go free after murdering an unarmed Trayvon Martin.

Recently the conservative lobbying group has found its way into the previously untapped market of public education by producing an education “report card.” And the 2013 result is not a pretty sight.

Report Full Of “Shoddy” Research

Professor Christopher Lubienski and doctoral candidate T. Jameson Brewer, both of the University of Illinois, reviewed the [ALEC v Kids.pdf] document:

The ALEC report card assigns its grades based on states’ policies regarding their support for charter schools, their implementation of school voucher plans, and the permissiveness they display toward homeschooling.

The authors contend that these grades are based on “high quality” research demonstrating that the policies for which they award high grades will improve education for all students, Lubienski and Jameson write. Instead, the report card draws on the work of advocacy groups and is grounded in ideological tenets, leading the authors to assign high grades to states with unproven and even disproven market-based policies, the reviewers add. They point out that the authors’ claims of a growing body of research lacks citations; their grading system contradicts testing data that they report; and their data on alternative teacher research is simply wrong.

In fact, the research ALEC highlights is quite shoddy and is unsuitable for supporting its recommendations, Lubienski and Jameson conclude. The report’s purpose appears to be more about shifting control of education to private interests than in improving education.

Virginia is one of the nine states profiled in the report. Here’s what happened there:

Putting Profits Before Children

Governor Bob McDonnell received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from virtual learning company K12 Inc., and promptly requested the introduction of ALEC model legislation to expand virtual education in 2010.

It passed in the Virginia legislature, and K12 Inc. swung into action in Carroll County, one of the state’s most impoverished counties, to maximize the public money it would receive. Even when the school board voted to close K12 Inc. down because it did worse than traditional schools on 20 out of 22 measures, Virginia legislators with ALEC connections enacted a law in 2012 requiring high school students to take an online course to graduate.

71 Bills Based On ALEC ‘Models’

ALEC’s ‘model’ bills are making their way into state legislatures, as in Virginia, and they are dangerous.

Currently, at least 71 bills introduced in 2013 that make it harder for average Americans to access the civil justice system resemble ‘models’ from ALEC, according to an analysis by the Center for Media and Democracy. [see ALEC 2013 Education Bills at the end of this post ]

These are bills that would weaken the legal rights of people who are wrongfully harmed by a corporation. Not surprisingly, given the interests of ALEC, they are bills designed to provide protection for the industries who wrote them, by changing the rules to limit accountability when a corporation’s products or actions cause injury or death.

We need to kick ALEC out of education, and indeed, out of our lives.

Here are the two reports mentioned in this article.  Just click on the report name below and it will open for you to read.

ALEC v Kids

ALEC 2013 Education Bills

This article is written by Judy Molland and is published as Why ALEC Fabricated Public School Failures (and Why We’re Not Surprised at http://www.care2.com/causes/why-alec-fabricated-public-school-failures-and-why-were-not-surprised.html

http://respriv.org/category/states/virginia/

==

2006 Virginia Senate election:{}:[edit source | edit:{beta}::{]}:

During the United States Senate election in Virginia, 2006, Secretary of the Virginia State Board of Elections Jean Jensen concluded that incidents of voter suppression appeared widespread and deliberate. Documented incidents of voter suppression include:^[32]

• Democratic voters receiving calls incorrectly informing them voting will lead to arrest.
• Widespread calls fraudulently claiming to be "[Democratic Senate candidate Jim] Webb Volunteers," falsely telling voters their voting location had changed.
• Fliers paid for by the Republican Party, stating "SKIP THIS ELECTION" that allegedly attempted to suppress African-American turnout.

The FBI has since launched an investigation into the suppression attempts.^[33] Despite the allegations, Democrat Jim Webb narrowly defeated incumbent George Allen.

==

TAL 5/13 4 state climatologists fired for supporting (or opposing?) agw oregon, va, delaware and __

===

A recent study of ALEC's impact in Virginia found that it was responsible for 50 bills introduced there, including legislation to require people to show identification before voting, encourage schools to contract with private education companies, and legalize the use of deadly force in defending one's home.

===

As President Barack Obama was being inaugurated, Virginia House Republicans took advantage of a momentary absence of legislators to ram through a partisan redistricting. One Democratic legislator went along with their disgusting heist–and now she’s got a primary challenger in Evandra Thompson.

===

Home > GOP Voter Registration Scandal Widens, Prosecutors File Criminal Charges

---

The Brad Blog / By Brad Friedman [1]

GOP Voter Registration Scandal Widens, Prosecutors File Criminal Charges

October 20, 2012  |

A man originally reported to have been working for the Republican Party of Virginia was arrested by the Rockingham County, Va., Sheriff’s Office on Thursday and charged with attempting to destroy voter registration forms by tossing them into a dumpster behind a shopping center in Harrisonburg, Va.

“Prosecutors charged him with four counts of destruction of voter registration applications, eight counts of failing to disclose voter registration applications and one count of obstruction of justice,” according to a report late Thursday afternoon from TPM’s Ryan Reilly [2]. More charges could be forthcoming, according to officials.

But there is more to the story, as evidence emerges to document that it ties into a still-expanding nationwide GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal that the BRAD BLOG first began reporting in late September [3], after we’d learned that the Republican Party of Florida had turned in more than 100 allegedly fraudulent and otherwise suspect voter registration forms in Palm Beach County. The story has continued to widen ever since, to a dozen Florida counties and several other states, now including Virginia, and even to the upper-echelons of the Republican Party itself.

The man arrested today was 23-year-old Colin Small of Phoenixville, Pa. As it turns out, he does not only work for the Virginia Republican Party. According to an online profile, he appears to be working for the Republican National Committee and, prior to that, served as an Intern for Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., [4] in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Joseph Tanfani at the Los Angeles Times is reporting [5] that Small was “working as a supervisor as part of a registration operation in eight swing states financed by the Republican National Committee.”

He was first hired, says Tanfani, by Strategic Allied Consulting, the firm owned by the disgraced GOP operative and paid Mitt Romney political consultant Nathan Sproul. Even before this year’s registration fraud scandal, which began with Strategic in Florida, Sproul’s companies have long been accused of, though never charged with, destroying Democratic voter registrations in election after election and state after state, going back to at least 2004. Despite that, Sproul was hired by the Bush/Cheney campaign in 2004, by the McCain/Palin Campaign in 2008, and by Romney during the Republican Primary cycle.

Sproul’s company, Strategic Allied Consulting, was hired by the RNC in August for more than $3 million, reportedly as its sole voter registration company this cycle. His company was said to have been fired by the RNC [6] and five different battleground state Republican parties several weeks ago, after fraudulent voter registrations began to emerge across Florida. Some of those questionable applications included address changes for existing voters, such that Florida election officials told the BRAD BLOG[7]they worry voters could find themselves disenfranchised come Election Day. In Florida, as in many states, provisional ballots cast at precincts other than where voters are officially registered will not be counted. So changing the addresses on voter registrations without voters’ knowledge is a serious crime with potentially very serious consequences.

Reilly’s report at TPM says that Small “worked for PinPoint, a company hired to register voters on behalf of the Republican Party of Virginia.” In fact, PinPoint Staffing placed ads to hire workers for Strategic Allied Consulting in FL, VA and a number of other states, though the BRAD BLOG [8] has learned that the company removed many of those ads once the scandal began to break in Florida. They have since modified some of their newer ads to hide their ties to the Republican Party.

In response to queries we sent to Sproul late Thursday, his crisis spokesperson, David Leibowitz, attempted to distance his client from the arrest of the Republican Party worker in Virginia, claiming that “the only connection between Sproul and Pinpoint is that Nathan has, on occasion, used Pinpoint to hire some workers.”

It was PinPoint Staffing, in fact, which reportedly hired the man Strategic blamed for the fraudulent registration forms turned in originally in Palm Beach. But while PinPoint continues to seek workers for GOP-related efforts around the country, and as Sproul’s operations continue in “as many as 30 states”, it is the Republican National Committee’s response to the entire affair, including to the arrest today, that may be the most troubling…

The RNC ‘firing’ deception

[9]Colin Small, according to his LinkedIn profile, ascaptured by the NotLarrySaboto blog [9] (which was the first to highlight the initial report [10] of a man with PA license plates tossing a bag of Virginia Voter Registration Forms into a Harrisonburg dumpster), wasn’t only working for the state GOP or for Strategic Allied Consulting or for PinPoint. He was working as a “Grassroots Field Director at the Republican National Committee,” according to LinkedIn.

*Update: [NBC News is reporting [11] this morning that RNC Communications Director denies Small was "directly employed by the RNC" and that he will be "told to take down that."  Small is currently in jail and unable to respond to clear up the question, however.*]

Last month, several days after fraudulent voter registration forms collected by Strategic Allied Consulting and turned in by the Florida GOP began to be discovered by County election officials in Florida, the RNC claimed to have fired Strategic [6].

Sean Spicer, the RNC’s Communications Director, boasted that the party took “swift and bold action” after learning of the fraud, claiming they have “zero tolerance” for it or for those who commit it. However, as we summarized in our very first report on this scandal [3], Sproul’s companies have a long history of workers being paid per Republican registration form and for being accused of destroying Democratic ones.

Despite that, they were hired once again this year by the RNC who, Sproul says, asked them to create the new company in June without his name on it to avoid it being tied to him. Not very bold or zero tolerancy of them. Though Spicer said he had no knowledge of that arrangement, Sproul told the BRAD BLOG [8] he stands by his assertion.

Beyond that, last Thursday we reported [12] that Sproul’s firms, including what appeared to be a “clone” operation of Strategic Allied Consulting, calling itself Issue Advocacy Partners, were still found working for Republicans and right-wing ballot initiatives in at least 10 states. Subsequently, on Friday, the *Los Angeles Times*reported[13] that, in fact, Sproul was still “hiring workers for a voter canvassing operation this fall in as many as 30 states.”

On Thursday, following Small’s arrest, Sproul’s spokesman Leibowitz hedged that number by telling us via email: “What we said on the record to various media outlets is that his companies are working in ‘as many as 30 states.’ That could mean 1 state. Or 2. Or 30. You get the idea, I’m sure.”

We do. The idea is Sproul does not want to come clean about his ongoing operations and who it is that he continues to work for, preferring instead to live up to the “shady” adjective that’s often applied to him in the media. Despite our follow-up request, Leibowitz did not identify the exact number of states that Sproul was still working in, or who was paying him to do so.

Strategic was said to have been hired by state Republican Parties, at the request of the RNC, for voter registration drives in five states (Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Nevada and Colorado) and for “Get Out the Vote” campaigns in Ohio and Wisconsin. When both RNC and state GOP officials claimed to have fired them, it seems they didn’t really mean it.

In Tanfani’s report at LA Times late Thursday, Spicer confirms that, really, it may have only been Sproul who the party claimed to be “boldly” cutting ties with. The operations Sproul created for the Party beginning in August, the ones that led to fraudulent voter registrations in Florida and destroyed applications reported in Colorado and Nevada as well, are still in place.

“After Sproul was dumped,” Tanfani reports, “the registration operation that he assembled continued working under the supervision of party officials, Spicer said. He said the workers will continue to do get-out-the-vote work until the election.”

The firing of Sproul and Strategic Allied Consulting was a deception.

Moreover, as The BRAD BLOG detailed on Tuesday [14] the company’s mailing address, according to documents released [PDF] [15] by the Florida Dept. of Law Enforcement upon announcement of their statewide criminal investigation of Strategic [16] (the firm is also being criminally investigated in CO [17]), was registered as a corporation last June out of the same law office run by top-level Republican National Committee election attorneys where both Karl Rove’s American Crossroads Super-PAC and the Koch Brothers’ Americans for Prosperity are also based.

Despite Spicer’s attempt to downplay the VA incident on Thursday — “He made a mistake and he’s being charged with it, which we fully support” — as he similarly did for the FL incidents previously, it’s become clear that the RNC’s deceptive and often illegal registration and canvass operations are toxic, widespread, and very high-reaching.

Ironically, or perhaps not at this point, Romney, who hired Sproul late last year as a “political consultant” for some $71,000, appears to have committed both voter registration fraud *and* voter fraud himself [18] in Massachusetts, when he voted in the January 2010 U.S. Senate Special Election between Scott Brown and Martha Coakley. While he owned houses in both California and New Hampshire at the time, he did not own a Massachusetts home until July of that year. Instead, he used the basement of his son’s Belmont, Mass., home as his own registration address in apparent contravention of Massachusetts state residency laws. *See our still-growing list of other [very high-profile GOPers recently involved in apparent election fraud crimes [19].*]

Trashed registration forms in Virginia

According to FEC filings obtained by CBS 6 in Richmond [20] last month, the Virginia Republican Party reportedly paid some $500,000 to Strategic for registration work before the state GOP claimed to have fired them, several days after the fraudulent forms collected by Strategic and submitted to county Supervisors of Elections by the Florida GOP began to surface in the Sunshine State. As we now know, only Sproul was fired. The voter registration operation itself continued.

Small, the man arrested on Thursday and charged with eight felony counts and five misdemeanors after allegedly having been found to have tossed at least eight registration forms into a dumpster in Harrisonburg, Va. (Rockingham County), was reportedly working for an operation named PinPoint on behalf of the Virginia GOP, according to Reilly at TPM.

In an earlier report on the matter at TPM [21], before Small’s arrest later in the day, Reilly noted that “Virginia does not register voters by political party, so it would be difficult for someone to discard forms from their political opponents.”

Not really.

Reilly’s assessment does not take into account the very specific and purposely deceptive process used by Sproul’s companies — and, as suggested by evidence we’ve collected, perhaps other Republican-based voter registration outfits across the country — to identify and register only Republicans to vote, while attempting to filter out Democratic-leaning voters.

In an investigative report earlier this month, the BRAD BLOG detailed [22] video-taped and other evidence from nearly half a dozen states, demonstrating a deceptive, national Republican voter registration strategy where voter registration workers purposely misrepresented themselves as pollster to potential registrants.

Essentially, as detailed in video clips and other testimony in that report, the GOP voter registration workers hired by Sproul were trained to pretend to be taking a poll and to ask voters if they supported Mitt Romney or Barack Obama. If the answer was “Obama”, the potential registrant was thanked and sent on their way. If the answer came back as “Romney”, they were given the opportunity to register to vote. In that way, the thousands of workers employed by Sproul, the former head of the Arizona Republican Party and Christian Coalition, kept many Democratic-leaning voters from registering to vote at all.

In one YouTube video that went viral last month [23], a young Colorado registration worker — who, it turned out, had been working for Sproul’s Strategic Allied Consulting on behalf of the state GOP — is seen doing exactly that. Another videoposted by Las Vegas ABC affiliate Action News 13 [24], shows a worker there playing out the same pollster scheme in Nevada. Sproul shared an email with The BRAD BLOG [8]in which he had boasted to other company officials that the Vegas video tape captured their worker carrying out her training “perfectly”.

In Virginia, where the Pennsylvania man working for the state GOP was arrested Thursday, Chesterfield County’s General Registrar Larry Haake was seen explaining to Richmond’s CBS 6 [20] in late September that he had received complaints of Strategic employees discovered doing the same thing in a library last month.

“They were responsible for people that appeared in some libraries in Chesterfield County, supposedly to conduct voter registration drives,” Haake said, “but they were asking voters for whom they are going to vote.”

Haake says he informed the GOP of the incident at the time, but, apparently, no action was taken.

If, in fact, Small, or the workers he is said to have supervised, were using the same technique of misrepresenting themselves to voters about being a pollster, rather than being a registration worker, it’s likely he would have been able to glean whether those registrations he was allegedly seen tossing into a dumpster were for Democratic or Republican-leaning voters.

The ‘PinPoint’ piece of the puzzle

In that same story on the Sproul/RNC voter registration deception [22], we cited a 9/28/12 report by the *Los Angeles Times* [22] that tied PinPoint Staffing to Sproul.

The article quoted William T. Hazard, the Strategic employee said by the company to have turned in the original fraudulent registration applications in Palm Beach County, Fla. He says he “did nothing wrong”, but told the paper that he was trained “to approach people and ask whom they supported in the presidential election. When people answered with President Obama, he said, he wished them a good day. If someone said Mitt Romney, he asked if they were registered to vote. If not, he handed them forms to fill out.”

He says that it was a help wanted ad placed by PinPoint that led him to the work for Strategic, Sproul, and the Republican Party.

“He got the voter registration job after responding to a Craigslist ad placed by a company called PinPoint Staffing seeking people to do ‘voter surveys’,” the Timesreported at the time. “The ad specified that all applicants had to be registered Republicans and active voters.”

Further, the paper says, “Although he reported to a PinPoint Staffing office in West Palm Beach, he said, ‘I thought I was dealing with the Republican Party.’”

PinPoint was key to Sproul’s operations. So who are they?

Over our three-week long investigation of Sproul and the GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal, we had collected dozens of help wanted ads posted by PinPoint Staffing that were nearly identical to others published on behalf of Strategic. Some of those ads placed in North Carolina had proved instrumental, originally, to theBlueNC blog’s Greg Flynn [25] in late August when they were key to his uncovering Sproul’s previously-secret ownership of Strategic Allied Consulting.

Many of the PinPoint ads on Craigslist and other sites — seeking “VOTER REGISTRATION SUPPORT” by “REPUBLICAN PARTY SUPPORTER(S)”, for example — were hastily removed from the Internet at nearly the same time that Sproul and Strategic were being outed and supposedly fired. The BRAD BLOG [8]captured many of them before they were taken down, some with the message: “This posting has been flagged for removal.”

We discovered ads by PinPoint Staffing in dozens of cities, in Virginia, North Carolina and Washington D.C., as well as all across Florida, from Pensacola in the panhandle, down to Palm Beach County where the first fraudulent registration forms were discovered [3] in late September.

More recently, PinPoint ads for “Political Jobs” or “Campaign” or “Canvassing” operations began to no longer include references to “Republican Voters” or “Romney” or the “Republican Party”. Instead they might read “ARE YOU LOOKING FOR YOUR BIG BREAK INTO POLITICS?”. Such ads have been found this month in Virginia, Wisconsin, New York, Arizona and Florida.

During our research on our report last week detailing the state’s where Sproul was confirmed to still be working [12], we found evidence of his continuing operations under the names Issue Advocacy Partners and Grassroots Outreach in Alabama, California, Georgia, Louisiana, Oregon, Wisconsin, Iowa, Virginia, New York, New Jersey and, possibly, Ohio (where the RNC had previously admitted that Strategic had been scheduled to do “Get Out the Vote” work this year before the “firing”.)

At TPM, Reilly reports that “A man who answered the phone at Pinpoint and only gave his name as Ryan said he was not allowed to comment. ‘I really want to stay out of it,’ he said.”

Ads for Strategic placed in late Summer by PinPoint in Alachua, Fla., and in September in Winston Salem, N.C., told perspective employees to “Contact Ryan.”

The phone number given on the ads was from Phoenix, AZ. Sproul’s main operation is based just outside of Phoenix, in Tempe.

“Let me be as unequivocal as possible. Nathan Sproul and his businesses have no ownership interest in Pinpoint,” his spokesperson Leibowitz, hired by Sproul to manage the crisis several weeks into it, insisted to The BRAD BLOG [8] late Thursday. “He doesn’t control it, nor is he affiliated with it.”

“The only connection between Sproul and Pinpoint is that Nathan has, on occasion, used Pinpoint to hire some workers.”

When we followed up to ask if Sproul had used PinPoint to hire workers in FL, VA or anywhere else, whether any of his current companies are still using them, and for what services he has used them in the past, or if he has since stopped, Leibowitz demurred.

“Given that Nathan’s companies have no connection to the Pinpoint-related story you cited earlier, we see no need to go into any further detail.”

•  Deborah Newell Tornello [26] contributed research to this report.

CORRECTIONS: We’ve updated the piece above to reflect new information made available since publication early this morning. Included in the updates: TPM corrected its report from last night [27] to say that “The Rockingham County Sheriff office originally said Small was 31 years old. The agency later corrected that information to say he is 23″; Small was charged with 8 felony counts and 5 misdemeanors, not 13 felonies as we’d initially described.

This article first appeared at THE BRAD BLOG [28]

See more stories tagged with:

gop [29],

election 2012 [30],

voting scandal [31]

---

Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/gop-voter-registration-scandal-widens-prosecutors-file-criminal-charges

Links:

[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/brad-friedman

[2] http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/10/colin_small_virginia_gop_voter_registration_fraud.php

[3] http://www.bradblog.com/?p=9586

[4] http://kelly.house.gov/

[5] http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-voter-registration-gop-arrest-20121018,0,5352175.story

[6] http://www.bradblog.com/?p=9592

[7] http://www.bradblog.com/?p=9590

[8] http://www.bradblog.com/

[9] http://notlarrysabato.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451b13369e2017c32a0a23a970b-pi

[10] http://notlarrysabato.typepad.com/doh/2012/10/virginia-gop-caught-destroying-voter-registration-forms.html

[11] http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/19/14556980-gop-registration-worker-charged-with-voter-fraud?lite

[12] http://www.bradblog.com/?p=9627

[13] http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-fired-rnc-consultant-canvassing-campaign-20121012,0,2171682.story

[14] http://www.bradblog.com/?p=9632

[15] http://bradblog.com/Docs/ElectionsFraudComplaint_StrategicAlliedConsulting_092712.pdf

[16] http://www.bradblog.com/?p=9609

[17] http://www.bradblog.com/?p=9622

[18] http://www.bradblog.com/?p=9397

[19] http://www.bradblog.com/?p=9467

[20] http://wtvr.com/2012/09/27/virginia-republicans-fire-voter-registration-group/

[21] http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/10/virginia_sheriff_republican_voter_registration.php?ref=fpb

[22] http://www.bradblog.com/?p=9600

[23] http://www.bradblog.com/?p=9583

[24] http://www.ktnv.com/news/local/166966656.html

[25] http://www.bluenc.com/republican-paid-voter-registration-operation-linked-fraud

[26] http://litbrit.blogspot.com/

[27] http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/10/colin_small_virginia_gop_voter_registration_fraud.php?ref=fpnewsfeed

[28] http://www.bradblog.com/?p=9643

[29] http://www.alternet.org/tags/gop

[30] http://www.alternet.org/tags/election-2012

[31] http://www.alternet.org/tags/voting-scandal

[32] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B

===

Virginia: Virginia’s six Dirty Air Villains are Reps. Scott Rigell (R-VA2), Randy Forbes (RVA4),

Robert Hurt (R-VA5), Bob Goodlatte (R-VA6), House Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA7) and

Morgan Griffith (R-VA9).

Virginia’s three Clean Air Heroes are Reps. Gerry Connolly (DVA11),

James Moran (D-VA8) and Robert Scott (D-VA3).

---

Earlier this week, 40,000 members of the Daily Kos community sent an email to the Virginia State Board of Elections (VSBOE) demanding an investigation into a voter registration supervisor employed by Pinpoint, a subsidiary of Strategic Allied Consulting, after he was arrested and charged with 13 counts of voter registration fraud....

Rockingham County Sheriff Bryan E. Hutcheson said Small, 31, worked for an independent contractor hired by the Republican Party of Virginia to conduct voter registration drives. Small was arrested after the voter registration applications were found in a trash bin behind a Harrisonburg store.

McEachin urged Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli, a Republican, to launch an investigation.

"This is simply too serious an issue," McEachin said in a statement. "Voting is the bedrock of our democracy and we, as Virginians, deserve to know exactly what happened, how widespread the abuse and under whose orders, if any, the individual in question acted."

Cuccinelli spokesman Brian Gottstein said the attorney general can investigate election issues only if requested by the State Board of Elections.

Nikki Sheridan, the board's confidential policy adviser, said the case appeared to be an isolated incident.

The Republican National Committee provides funds to state GOP offices for voter registration drives in swing states such as Virginia. Small worked for Pinpoint, a company hired by the Virginia GOP for that purpose.

==

Out-of-state donors pour into Virginia 

Top 10 donors to 2009 Virginia races:

1. AFSCME: $2,420,136

2. U.S. Chamber of Commerce: $972,877

3. Dominion Resources: $739,886

4. Edward Hart Rice: $694,350

5. Virginia Association of Realtors: $674,820

6. Communication Workers of America: $537,007

7. Service Employees International Union:  $508,871

8. Altria: $429,520

9. Consumer Litigation Associates: $423,143

10. Virginia AFL-CIO: $411,475

By Paige Winfield Cunningham

Donations poured last year onto the shifting political fault lines of **Virginia** soil—a terrain that’s looking increasingly fertile to the major players in American politics.

While the **U.S. Chamber of Commerce** wrote checks to **Gov**. **Bob McDonnell**, his Democratic opponent Creigh Deeds received heavy support from labor unions. The race prompted record-breaking donations, especially from out-of-state donors, and ramped up Virginia’s presence on the national scene.

“One of the things the 2009 election brought was to convince people that those outside Virginia were stronger than anyone thought,” says Stephen Farnsworth, a professor of communications at George Mason University. “When Democratic donors are looking where to put their money, Virginia is much more on the radar screen.”

In a state known for its unfriendliness to organized labor, a surge in activity is one of the most striking trends in the narrative of the rise and fall of influentials in Virginia politics. Unions unloaded nearly as many political donations for Virginia candidates last year as in the preceding four years combined.

Labor unions gave $5.9 million to Democrats during the 2009 gubernatorial election, according to data compiled by the Virginia Public Access Project, a nonpartisan tracker of money in politics. In contrast, unions gave $6.2 million from 2005 to 2008, with just $2.8 million donated during the 2005 gubernatorial race....

Tobacco and real estate donations double

The nation’s No. 1 tobacco company ranked eighth on the list of top 10 donors, giving $429,520 to Virginia candidates.

Altria Group, Inc. finished moving its headquarters from Connecticut to Richmond early last year, where it now makes all of its cigarettes and maintains research laboratories. Employing about 5,700 in the Richmond area, Altria is ranked as the seventh-largest private-sector employer in the region.

Holsworth thinks Virginia’s new ban on smoking in most bars and restaurants, passed in February 2009, could have motivated Altria to nearly double its donations compared to 2005.

“I think they were taken aback by the fact that it was able to go through,” Holsworth said. “They just put their headquarters here and all of a sudden to be subjected to that was very striking.”

Altria gave about two-thirds of contributions last year to Republican candidates or committees. Spokesperson Bill Phelps declined to comment on the size or recipients of the company’s donations.

“The company and its political action committees support the campaigns of candidates who understand the legislative and regulatory issues that are important to our companies,” Phelps said, in an email....

http://virginia.watchdog.org/1086/out-of-state-donors-pour-into-virginia-2/