Albemarle County Opts Out

MoonHowler

Albemarle County has decided to opt out of paying VRS contributions for new employees hired after July 1, 2010. The General Assembly allows them to chose whether to pay the employee contribution or not.

According to the Richmond Times Dispatch:

CHARLOTTESVILLE — Albemarle County officials have decided to stop picking up the tab for what local government employees have to pay into the state retirement system.

Albemarle, along with the bulk of localities in Virginia, has long been required to pay what is considered the employees’ retirement contribution share. But this year’s General Assembly gave localities the option to make new employees pay the contribution themselves — which equals 5 percent of their salaries — so Albemarle decided to make new employees start paying.

The change applies only to new employees who have never been in the Virginia Retirement System and are hired after July 1.

The benefit payouts will be deducted from employees’ paychecks.

Depending on how many employees the county hires after July 1, the move at a joint meeting last week between the Board of Supervisors and School Board could save the county a couple of hundred thousand dollars per year, officials estimated

.

It is unclear whether the school board will go the same route and the county. One thing being discussed is raising the pay to attract more teachers and then soaking the new employees for their VRS contribution. I hope they tell them this before they sign on. It almost seems deceptive. The VRS employee contribution is 5% of the employee’s annual salary. I am not sure I see where Albemarle County Schools would be saving money if they paid more to the new employees and didn’t pay VRS. Wouldn’t they have to pay highter FICA contributions? It also eventually raises the amount their pension is calulated on. Pay me now or pay me later. It seems to me that they are just being sneaky. I hope it ends up biting them in the butt.

Full Story

Cuccinelli to attend D.C. gay pride festival — sort of — (*JOKE*)

MoonHowler

One of our contributors sent us this news article. How clever.  I am trying not to laugh:

From the Washington Post:

Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli will be the special guest at the Capital Pride Festival this weekend — only he doesn’t know it yet.

The Virginia Partisans, a gay rights group with thousands of members in the state, will ask parade attendees to “kiss” a life-size cutout of the controversial attorney general in an event they are affectionately calling “Smooches for Cooch.”

 

 cooch2

The group will send a collection of photos of people kissing Cuccinelli to the attorney general along with the message that Virginia is for all lovers. The same motto will appear on stickers and banners at the group’s booth along the Pennsylvania Avenue parade route Sunday.

Cuccinelli, who advised public colleges that they could not legally prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, has called the practice of homosexuality “a detriment to our culture” and “wrong.”

The Partisans hope Cuccinelli will be just the draw they need to recruit members. The group considered a petition drive, but abandoned it because members thought it was too passé.

“We’re sending our love to Ken Cuccinelli,” said Terry Mansberger, president of the Virginia Partisans. “He’s the gift that keeps on giving.”

A spokesman for Cuccinelli had no comment.

 

Gay pride parades tend to get a little graphic. Cuccinelli knew what he was signing on for when he took on these gay issues. Being Attorney General doesn’t keep you from being humiliated.

Nanny Nut Ban? Nuts to that Idea!!!!

MoonHowler

What next?  Don’t the airlines have enough problems?  Federal regulators are considering restrictions or an outright ban on peanuts on commercial airlines because some people have severe allergies to peanuts.

According to the Washington Post:

Advocates say the move would ease fears and potential harm to the estimated 1.8 million Americans who suffer from a peanut allergy. Peanut farmers and food packagers, however, say it would be overreaching and unfair to their legume.

“The peanut is such a great snack and such an American snack,” said Martin Kanan, chief executive of King Nut, an Ohio company that packages the peanuts served by most U.S. airlines. “What’s next? Is it banning peanuts in ballparks?”

We need to listen to the CEO of King Nut.  Doesn’t this move sound rather ‘big brother?’ Surely people know if they are allergic to peanuts. People are allergic to dairy products and wheat products too. Do we ban all sandwiches and anything with milk in it, like cheese and real coffee creamer?   How about perfumes and scented products like deodorant?   Would travelers be forbidden to BTON?  (Bring your own nuts)

Peanuts are a standard snack. People need to be responsible for their own dietary restrictions.  If this kind of consumer ‘nannism’ continues, there will be nothing left to consume.  So many different things have been proposed to ban that I am losing track:  sugar, salt, trans fats, and now peanuts.    If peanuts go on airlines, salt is sure to follow. 

Some airlines have already banned peanuts.  Where does a person even go to voice a complaint?

Acceptable Use Policy Nails Cumberland County Employees

MoonHowler

From the Richmond Times Dispatch:

Public employees in Cumberland, Virginia are in big trouble over a joke many would consider racist. The joke deals with someone getting divorced and …well…let’s let the TD, as they call it further south, tell the story:

A racist joke that recently made its rounds via e-mail in Cumberland government offices is causing a stir in the rural county.

The forwarded joke about a hillbilly farmer seeking a divorce uses the term “nagger” in reference to an African-American baby.

According to e-mail records obtained by the Richmond Times-Dispatch through the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, the joke was sent to the county’s general registrar, Marlene Watson, on May 29. On June 1, Watson forwarded it to several others, including some county employees, with a note reading, “Too cute!!”

Two days later, Judy Marion, a Sheriff’s Office secretary, passed the joke along to all 24 county administration employees and Sheriff Darrell Hodges, among others.

Later that day, upon receiving the joke, County Administrator Judy Ownby issued a sharp rebuke by e-mail to all county employees, calling the e-mail “regrettable.”

She attached a copy of the county’s e-mail policy, which states that “inappropriate e-mail” is subject to disciplinary actions. It also recommends: “Treat every e-mail message as something that could end up on the front page of the Times-Dispatch.”

 

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Wartime Museum Hearing

MoonHowler

Concrete Bob and Cargo Squid of United Conservatives of Virginia (see UCV link) have requested that we publish the following public service announcement:

Next Wednesday, June 16th, there is a planning commission hearing for the Wartime Museum and we’re trying to gather as many supporters to attend as we can.

Obviously, the more Prince William County supporters we can gather the better, but support from any of you would be greatly appreciated.

The hearing is at 7pm at the McCoart Building in Woodbridge Virginia.

If you are unable to attend all I ask is that you forward this information to friends you think may be able to go. Again, if you live in or know a lot of people in the PWC area please ask them to come out and support the Museum.

The Museum is going to a great educational tool. They are planning to make it interactive, with docents acting as members of the armed forces from different time periods.

Hope you can support it. If so, please spread the word.

County supervisors email links are in the top tabs. If you have questions, leave a note here for Cargosquid.

Alaska Congressman Reassures us Gulf Oil Leak Not a Disaster

MoonHowler

Alaska Congressman Don Young has told Congress that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is not an environmental disaster:

Young said: “This is not an environmental disaster, and I will say that again and again because it is a national phenomena. Oil has seeped into this ocean for centuries, will continue to do it. During World War II there was over 10 million barrels of oil spilt from ships, and no natural catastrophe. … We will lose some birds, we will lose some fixed sea life, but overall it will recover.”

Huh? And Sarah Palin recommended that Alaska mght help with this disaster? Are these people nuts? It seems that Congress has had more reaction to dealing with ACORN than it has in dealing with BP Oil as various members of congress scramble to protect BP and other oil companies for from fiscal responsibility.  Each day,   the Foxies are falling all over themselves trying to blame President Obama for the entire mess.  Granted, he hasn’t been perfect but he is not alone and he isn’t throwing out a shroud of protection over the oil company. 

According the the website USAspending.gov, billions of dollars in government contracts are currently held with BP Oil. 61 alone are with DOD. Where is the outrage in congress? Where is the sense of urgency? 

Meanwhile, there is all sorts of moaning and groaning over the 50 deep water oil rigs that have been shut down temporarily. Doesn’t it make sense to suspend this type of work? If something goes wrong, shouldn’t we know how to fix it? Obviously no one knows how to shut these wells down if for whatever reason, the umbilical cord detaches from the mother-ship. Let’s get a solution before we allow more rigs to operate. The first sign of mental illness is to repeat behavior and expect a different outcome.

The ocean truly is the last frontier. Man’s capacity for making stupid statements seems truly infinite.

Rachel Maddow has been all over this disaster.  Speaking of lack of local response, her guest gives us a close up look.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Border Incident: A stoning, a shooting, a death and 2 martyrs

MoonHowler

Things have been heating up on the Mexican-American border at a spot known as Black Bridge,  one of the international bridges that connects  El Paso, Texas, and  Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua.   A U.S. Border Patrol officer shot and killed a 14-year-old boy, Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca.  That’s the end of  any agreement on what happened.  Each country has its own side of the story. 

 The short version, according to Tony Payan, special to CNN:

The boy lay dead on the Mexican side and the Border Patrol agent was removed from the scene by U.S. officials. American officials say it was a case of self-defense. Mexican authorities condemned the killing as the use of excessive force.

The facts are still coming out, but based on the English and the Spanish news reports, it is easy to see that the two sides do not agree on the particulars, much less on their interpretation.

To people across the two nations who see reports of the death on TV or in the papers, it’s a dramatic news story — a boy with a bullet in his head and an agent under investigation. But here at the border, the scene, the actors, the act — as if carefully choreographed, chosen and scripted — read like an up-close metaphor for everything that is broken with our border and with immigration.

A dead kid is not the kind of incident we need.  An endangered border patrol agent  doesn’t bode real well with the American people either, especially after the incident several years ago with agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean who were sent to prison for shooting a drug smuggler in the rear end. 

Meanwhile the Mexican government has demanded that the border agent be turned over to them for killing a kid in Mexico.  The FBI is treating the case as an assault on a federal agent.  It sounds like no good will come from this case.  Americans are not going to tolerate its border patrol agents being used as cannon fodder.  

It sounds like this is an area that needs a new tall, strong fence, given past history in the region.  This location is one of the most violent and the dead boy has been linked to drug smuggling.  Both countries will have their martyrs.

We either mean business or we don’t.  We can’t have our agents and military personnel  shooting rubber bullets.  Kids who want to throw rocks and anything else at our agents are endangering lives, both their own and the agents, and they need to learn that American kids die every day because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time, often doing the wrong thing.    It sounds harsh but that is the reality.

Research You Did Not Read in the N & M

MoonHowler

People may not like my politics but I do try to represent what goes onto this blog honestly. I think it is only fair to share this post from Debra Shutika’s blog with the contributors on our blog. It explains a great deal about the study that they did. Apparently, the News and Messenger also set the stage for some very bad press.  

These women worked hard and deserve to have their point of view heard without the filter of those with not-so-hidden agendas.  If residents of the greater Manassas area  truly want to have their community problems solved, it makes sense, at least to me, to talk with people who at least will listen to you, such as these to researchers.  Please read the entire post before commenting:

From Debra Shutika:

To my readers:  

 

Yesterday a local Virginia newspaper ran a story in response to a a press release regarding research that I and my colleague, Carol Cleaveland, had conducted in Manassas in 2008 and 2009. We are ethnographers, which means we utilize ethnography as our primary research method.  Ethnography is a research method often used in the social sciences, particularly anthropology, folklore and sociology, but also in a variety of other fields.  The goal of ethnography is to gather data that is in-depth and from a small group of people.  Usually this would be a local community, a neighborhood, or even a small town.  Data collection is done a number of ways: participant observation (where the researcher lives alongside his or her informants and documents day-to-day life and activities), but also interviews and questionnaires.  The purpose of an ethnographic account is to describe those who are studies (i.e., the people or ethnos) and to document this through writing, thus the term, ethnography. 

 

We began our work in Manassas in the Weems neighborhood and Sumner Lakes in March 2008.  During that period, we interviewed 100 household that were randomly selected.  These households were non-immigrant households. The householder had to be able to speak English fluently to participate.  The summary of that research is highlighted this statement that I made earlier this year:

 

“Our research suggests that the changes that have taken place in Manassas in the last 20 years have been unsettling for some residents,” says Debra Lattanzi Shutika, assistant professor of English at Mason. “Many of these residents seemed to be experiencing what I have identified as a type of ‘localized displacement’—they feel out of place in their home community. In some cases, residents told us that they found it difficult to adapt to the changes taking place around them, and that these changes that made their ‘home’ seem unfamiliar.”

Throughout this phase of the research, we asked residents about a number of changes in their community. What we found is that Manassas had changed significantly over the last 20 years, and many residents viewed those changes as unsettling.  We also discovered that  a majority of the people we talked to had strong negative feelings about immigrants. We interviewed 103 households and then went back and did an additional 30 in-depth interviews.  These ranged from 1-3 hours in length, depending on the informant.

 

In the second phase of this study, we went into two predominantly Latino neighborhoods and interviewed a non-random sample of residents. There we interviewed 60 people.  These residents reported feeling alienated from the community, and in some cases, extreme fear.  What I told Ms. Chumley when I spoke to her on Monday was, although it was not surprising that an undocumented person would feel frightened by the law, we were not expecting DOCUMENTED LATINOS, of which there are many in the area, to feel this way.  In fact, the responses of the documented indicated that they were just as likely to fear leaving their homes or sending their children out to play as others.  [Note: for reasons of confidentiality, we did not directly ask people about their documentation status.  However, those who were documented were forthcoming about their residency status.]

 

When I read Ms. Chumley’s article, I was disappointed with her report because she clearly misrepresented our work.  For instance, both Prof. Cleaveland and I told her that we understood the frustrations of Manassas residents who were distressed with changes in their neighborhoods, such as having neighbors who did not cut their grass, had too many cars parked around their homes, and left trash unattended around their homes and on their laws.  For my part, most of the work that I have done in the last 15 years with immigration has focused equally on American-born residents in new destinations of Mexican migration.  I recently published an essay on this, which is linked here.

In short, I may disagree with some of my informants about their perspectives on immigration, but that is not to say that I don’t think their perspectives should be ignored.  I honestly think that one of the major reasons why immigration has become such a volatile topic is because for too long residents complaints about the changes to their communities and the legitimate problems that come with a rapid increase in an immigrant population have been ignored by their local government. 

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What if the Gulf….

MoonHowler

At lunch today, my oldest friend and I were musing about the horrible ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. First we discussed anger and decided it was wasted energy. We discussed that we should order shrimp because it might become extinct. And then we talked about what would happen if ‘they’ never got that gusher turned off. What if it never happens?

How long would it take the gulf to pollute the rest of the oceans? Are we in a mass extinction? Being at the top of the food chain could really suck. Could huge amounts of oil in the oceans eventually affect our fresh water?

Is the gasoline engine really going to be out undoing as a species? Seriously, what happens if ‘they’ can’t get that damn thing shut off?

No pelican pictures. I can’t stand looking at them.

George Mason Study Brings out the Worst in County Chair and CXO

MoonHowler

A recent study on immigration from George Mason Univsity seems to have brought out the worst in our County Chair, Corey Stewart and newly appointed CXO, Melissa Peacor. Perhaps Ms. Peacor should be forgiven. She is a newly hired CXO who apparently came in under the auspices of Mr. Stewart. She hasn’t been around long enough to be an independent thinker. Even if she is, perhaps it is wiser to quote the party line. However, in the case of Corey Stewart, there is simply no pass. He is his usual bigoted, uninformed, blow-hard, name-calling, opportunistic self.

From the News and Messenger:

A new study from the George Mason University’s Project on Immigration finds many immigrants have lived in fear since the passage of Prince William’s 2007 resolution that requires police to check legal status of those who are arrested.

The study was conducted by Debra Lattanzi Shutika, an English professor and folklorist, and Carol Cleaveland, a professional social worker. Lattanzi Shutika also said they were both “ethnographers,” which she defined as a research methodology that focuses on in-depth interviews with people.

“We go into communities for long periods of time and talk in depth to people,” Lattanzi Shutika said, adding that the GMU study conducted interviews in two communities in Manassas called the Weems Neighborhood and Sumner Lakes. “In some cases, we had two-to-three hour interviews.”

For the study, headlined on a press release from GMU as “Strict Immigration Law in Virginia County Adversely Affecting Well-Being of Latino Residents, New Survey Shows,” the two researchers interviewed residents of 60 Spanish-speaking households and 104 English-speaking households, Cleaveland said.

The goal, according to Cleaveland, was to “understand the true experiences of Latino immigrants living in a certain area of Prince William County … [and] to understand what kind of experiences they were having since the resolution.”

Those experiences, she continued, were that “people are afraid to leave the house, people feel that if they go to work they could be picked up or deported while their children are in school, and people have abandoned their homes because of this law.”
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Public Servants–The new political targets

MoonHowler

One only has to dipstick around the blogosphere to pick up on the national tone against public servants. You know, your teachers, your cops, your fire fighters and first responders, your county and city employees, your state workers–all those people who are out making the wheels or progress grind along.

Why are these people suddenly the victims of public wrath? The slumping economy. Public employees are paid out of state and local public coffers. When times are tight, all of a sudden the government employees become dog biscuits. If people have to pay higher taxes to keep their public services alive and well, then the public employees who do the work get kicked about a bit.

Politico addresses this issue:

Spurred by state budget crunches and an angry public mood, Republican and some Democratic leaders are focusing with increasing intensity on public workers and the unions that represent them, casting them as overpaid obstacles to good government and demanding cuts in their often-generous benefits.

Unlike past battles over the high cost of labor, this time pitched battles over wages and pensions are being waged from Sacramento to Springfield to New York City and the conflict is marked by its bipartisan tone, with public employee unions emerging as an intransigent public enemy number one in cities and state capitals across the country.

They’re the whipping boys for a new generation of governors who, thanks to a tanking economy and an assist from editorial boards, feel freer than ever to make political targets out of what was once a protected liberal class of teachers, cops, and other public servants.

Republicans around the nation have cheered New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, whose shouting match over budget cuts with an outraged teacher—“You don’t have to” teach, he told her without sympathy—became a YouTube sensation on the right last week.

And even Democrats, like the nominee for governor in New York, Andrew Cuomo, have echoed the attacks on unions.

Christie is merely the most florid voice for a calculated, national effort to fundamentally reshape the debate on the labor costs that account for the bulk of government spending at every level. And at the core of the shift is a perception among many political leaders that public anger at civil servants is boiling over.

“We have a new privileged class in America,” said Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who rescinded state workers’ collective bargaining power on his first day in office in 2006. “We used to think of government workers as underpaid public servants. Now they are better paid than the people who pay their salaries.”

“It’s a part of a very large question the nation’s got to face,” Daniels told POLITICO in an interview. “Who serves whom here? Is the public sector—as some of us have always thought—there to serve the rest of society? Or is it the other way around?”

What about those public employees in most of the southern states, including Virginia, where there is no collective bargaining? Most employees are not union workers. There is strong resentment of these workers. I not only don’t see it, it incenses me.

People, especially those living in suburban and urban areas, expect public services like schools, police, fire fighters, libraries, county and city services. They are busy and they don’t like standing in line. they want their children to receive top notch educations and they don’t want a rescue squad to take a half hour to get to their house. Services are a major reason to move to the suburbs.

People need to be mighty careful about what they complain about. Too much government? Put your own house fire out. Clean up your own oil slicks. Is it the pensions? Is it the 401k plans? Perhaps that is small compensation for those who served the public rather that going into the private sector.

Open Thread Monday 6/7/10

MoonHowler

Let’s start off a new week with the promised open thread.
There is some very sad county news. Details to follow.
I hear Bob Fitzsimmonds has posted that he is running for state senator again. How many times has this guy lost already? He is not a mainstream candidate. I expect Senator Colgan will have to hang in there even longer if this is going to happen.

Presidential Approval Ratings: Is Obama Unpopular?

MoonHowler

If one reads this blog one might assume that the current president is very unpopular. However, we have been overly blessed with those who feel he is lower than a snake’s belly. There are also a fair number of people who also don’t engage.

Posted below is a comparison chart of presidential approval ratings. President Obama has gone from about an initial approval rating of 65% to a current one that vacillates between 42-50% approval. Compare that to these guys:

Chart from the WSJ
Chart from the WSJ

Remember Bill Clinton who was vilified by the right even before he took office? Remember the reports that showed he would have been elected for a third term? This was a president who went through an impeachment. It goes to show you that the people who are dissatisfied often are loud and proud and those who have no beef remain silent. It’s easier to get through the day.

As for the oil leak, what is it we would have him do?

Kicking Ass, Obama Style

MoonHowler

The press is all over Obama’s ass kicking statement.  First, he was criticized for not showing emotion.  Then he was chastised for not being angry enough.  So now  the president has spoken:

“I was down there a month ago, before most of these talking heads were even paying attention to the Gulf,” the president told Matt Lauer in a clip released this evening. “A month ago I was meeting with fishermen down there, standing in the rain talking about what a potential crisis this could be. And I don’t sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar, we talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick.”

 

Predictably, The Fox and Friends crew took the President to task for saying ‘ass.’ In fact, the word was ‘bleeped’ out. Then they took him to task for trying to be tough, for not doing it sooner, for doing it at all and for doing it late.  The the President caught it for faking anger, whatever that means. They went on and on this morning.  It was totally amazing how much bashing went on. 

Interesting.   Why is it that people need to be told how and what to think?   I want to hear things for myself.  I can figure out what to think and if I can’t, there are places to go ask. 

Perhaps it is because this was MSNBC”s inteview.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy