Day: October 13, 2008

Now, its bad enough that this country is dealing with an economic crisis, enveloped in global ramifications, but then, to top it off, you have this Republican GOP yahoo feeding the flames of ignorance and hatred, and it makes one wonder, how BAD can Prince William County look?  This article in Time magazine allows us a glimpse into the local strategy of the McCain campaign and it isn’t a pretty sight.

In response to this outrageous comment by Jeff Frederick, John McCain’s tepid response is incredibly disappointing. I wonder, in what “context” would comparing Senator Obama to Osama Bin Laden EVER be acceptable?

If John McCainis as serious as he says about running a “respectful” campaign against an opponent he considers “a decent person,” word hasn’t yet trickled down to his newly opened storefront field office in Gainesville, Virginia.

No Democratic presidential candidate has carried Virginia since 1964, and most election years both campaigns pretty much ignore the state. This time, however, McCain is running behind Barack Obama in statewide polls, thanks in large part to the head start he got on the ground there. “We haven’t seen a race like this in Virginia — ever,” said state GOP Chairman Jeffrey M. Frederick. “The last time was 40 years ago, and they didn’t run races like this.”

Indeed, Frederick, a 33-year-old state legislator, hadn’t even been born yet. But earlier this year Frederick unseated a moderate 71-year-old former lieutenant governor (who also happens to be Jenna Bush’s father-in-law) to become head of the Virginia GOP, promising “bold new leadership” for a state party recently on the decline.

The McCain campaign invited me to visit Frederick and the Gainesville operation on Saturday morning, to get a first-hand glimpse of its ground game in Prince William County, Virginia, a fast-growing area about 30 miles from Washington, D.C.

With so much at stake, and time running short, Frederick did not feel he had the luxury of subtlety. He climbed atop a folding chair to give 30 campaign volunteers who were about to go canvassing door to door their talking points — for instance, the connection between Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden: “Both have friends that bombed the Pentagon,” he said. “That is scary.” It is also not exactly true — though that distorted reference to Obama’s controversial association with William Ayers, a former 60s radical, was enough to get the volunteers stoked. “And he won’t salute the flag,” one woman added, repeating another myth about Obama. She was quickly topped by a man who called out, “We don’t even know where Senator Obama was really born.” Actually, we do; it’s Hawaii.

The Washington Post now reports on the higher than expected enrollment of ESOL students in Prince William County Schools but refuses to lay blame for the debacle on anyone in particular.

School officials said that it’s not unusual to miss enrollment projections but that the under-projection in ESOL is unusually large — and potentially costly. If school officials had had better estimates, the information would have been part of their budget request to county supervisors, who base the county tax rate partly on the school system’s needs.

And now, contrary to BVBL’s claims that ‘PWC’s greatest fiscal savings will come from not having to educate ESOL students at a 50% greater cost than regular students’, we instead learn there has been NO significant financial offset to this failed experiment which instead has caused us to underestimate the school’s budget causing a rather unprecedented $1.6 million shortfall.

We should be asking ourselves, what was the point? We have spent millions of dollars without being able to account for any savings. And now, in all probability we will witness the legalization of a majority of these individuals with the end result being that Prince William County will have done ourselves more harm than good.

Additionally what we have learned:

• underestimating the ESOL enrollment for 529 students equates to a $1.6 million shortfall but using Stewart/Stirrup’s Fuzzy Math not educating 700 students would have saved us $7 million
• educating an ESOL student costs $2880, a far cry from the 50% that BVBL suggests
• there’s most likely a constant interchange of students between Counties
• any increases in ESOL enrollment in surrounding Counties appears to be part of an overall trend in higher general enrollment

The appointment of Robert Duecaster, although narrowly approved by a 5-3 vote, only sets the example of legitimizing the extreme rhetoric surrounding immigration and the primary target, Hispanics.  Although there are some that will dismiss the findings of the Southern Poverty Law Center, can they also ignore the Anti Defamation League? Mr. Duecaster has every right under the constitution to express his feelings towards Latinos as “invaders” and that the invasion is being “funded by foreign governments”. Mr. Duecaster states that he has a message for the current President of Mexico, that “citizens do not want this internationalization”. Mr. Duecaster never points out any other ethnic groups in has diatribe on april 29th except Latinos when referring to illegal immigration. I have included only a partial part of this most recent piece written by SPLC, please click on the link to read it in its entirety.

Robert L. Duecaster helps lead a nativist extremist group and regularly makes defamatory comments about Catholics, Muslims and undocumented immigrants, calling the latter in an October 2007 blog post “an invasion of parasites set on reducing this country to the levels of their own.”

But all that didn’t stop the Prince William (Va.) Board of County Supervisors from appointing him to a committee that will influence county decision making on human services policy and budget priorities. After a closed-door discussion, the board voted 5-3 on Sept. 16 to approve Duecaster’s nomination to the Human Services Strategic Goals Task Force, which will develop a roadmap for the next four years of human services planning.

Duecaster is secretary of Help Save Manassas, an anti-immigration group that has spawned other “Help Save” chapters in Virginia and Maryland. In 2007, he helped author a local ordinance aimed at denying county services to undocumented immigrants and empowering local police to enforce federal immigration law. County officials later softened the ordinance because of concerns that it could lead to racial profiling.

Duecaster is known for his inflammatory remarks. “This country is being invaded no less than if hordes of armed people came across its borders,” he said during an October 2007 county supervisors meeting. “This invasion is not armed, but they’ve got weapons. The weapons that they use are their anchor babies. … This invasion is being funded by foreign governments.” He offered another dire warning to the supervisors in April 2008: “You’re at an historic crossroad today. You can fund and continue to enforce the rule of law resolution or you can let it go by the wayside and watch this county and the rest of this region degenerate into a third world slum.”

Duecaster, a 57-year-old lawyer, was nominated to the human services task force by County Supervisor John T. Stirrup Jr., who said criticisms of Duecaster’s appointment amounted to “character assassination.” In a recent interviewwith The Washington Post, Duecaster didn’t retract any of his controversial past statements. “At the time the comments were made, we were living in a threatening and inflammatory environment,” he said, adding that he hoped to serve “the interest of legal residents of this county.”

Duecaster has been even more flagrant in his remarks under cover of a pseudonym, according to the Post, which reported that on Black Velvet Bruce Li, the blog of Help Save Manassas founder Greg Letiecq, Duecaster has postedblatantly bigoted comments using the screen name “Advocator.”

In January 2008, Advocator called for an investigation into “whether or not illegal aliens have a preferred breeding season.” In April, he responded to a comment someone had posted using the pseudonym “Truth” with this gem: “An’ thass right, Trufe, I am bitching about ESOL [English for Speakers of Other Languages] as classes. Those anchor babies be costing me money.”