John Markell in his bar. | Photo by Rebecca Barnett

Back in May I told you the story of Roanoke’s self-styled “most honest restaurateur,” John Markell.

The ex-gun shop owner was in a jackpot with the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Board because he didn’t sell enough food at Markell’s Bar & Grill, a humble and smoky watering hole on Williamson Road.

And he wasn’t going to lie and claim he did, like he suspects a lot of his competitors do.

So he went to an ABC hearing in May, without a lawyer, and he told the truth.

Markell explained all the things he was doing to sell more food. He showed them the menu, with $2 grilled-cheese and egg-salad sandwiches, and other items.

But no matter what he did with food, his customers weren’t buying enough. He couldn’t sell at least $4,000 a month worth, as ABC regulations require for places with mixed-drink licenses.

Last week, Markell found out what his honesty would cost him: $1,000 and a 5-day liquor license suspension — provided he coughs up the fine by Aug. 27. If pays later, he’ll get a 10-day liquor license suspension.

Both of those are more severe than the $1,000 fine and 3-day suspension the ABC hit 202 Market with after River Laker did a dumb, impromptu and unapproved strip act there last year. That was ridiculous, too — but nudity is apparently a lesser ABC sin than selling too few sandwiches.

READ THE REST OF THIS COLUMN HERE.

The question as to whether Virginia should allow uranium mining in Pittsylvania County has taken a back seat to more pressing stuff lately: power outages, mandatory pre-abortion ultrasounds and guaranteed profits for gas and electric companies.

But the uranium mining issue is about to arise again here in Roanoke in a couple of weeks. Rupert Cutler, a former city councilman, federal cabinet undersecretary and ardent conservationist, has organized a symposium here in town on the subject.

The day-long event is July 27 at Virginia Western Community College and is open to the public (registration is $25). If you’re in town then you should consider attending.

There are two basic questions. One is, can uranium mining and milling be done safely in the Roanoke River watershed, which empties into North Carolina’s Lake Gaston (and ultimately Albermarle and Pamlico sounds), and serves as a key water supply for Virginia Beach and five military bases?

The other depends on the answer to that first question. Should the Virginia General Assembly lift its 30-year-old moratorium on uranium mining? That’s going to be a huge issue in the 2013 legislative session. Enormous political pressure has been brought on the state legislature to do just that. Read more »

Wikimedia Commons

Unamused at Virginia’s DMV

Thank you for your July 10 column about Cathy Wilkinson’s difficulties in obtaining a new driver’s license after accidentally letting her old license expire.  I have had a few problems in that area myself.  I hope I don’t bore you too much with the length of my rant.

When I moved to Virginia from Ohio in 2003, the DMV in Christiansburg refused to accept my Ohio birth certificate even with a raised seal and a stamp stating “This is a certified copy of the original certificate filed at the Columbus Department of Health.”  I was told that I needed the original copy.  And yes, the clerk insisted it had to be the original and I didn’t know I could have asked for a supervisor.  I asked the nice people at the Columbus Department of Health if they would let me borrow the original (that is stored on microfilm).  They declined.  I had a passport so was able to obtain my driver’s license with that.

When my son applied for his learner’s permit in 2007, the DMV in Christiansburg did not have a problem with the certified copy, but the clerk at first refused his birth certificate because his name was typewritten and the G in our last name kind of looked like a C.  I did argue over that and his birth certificate was eventually accepted.  However when he allowed his license to expire last year, his birth certificate issued by the Columbus Department of Health was no longer acceptable.  It had to be issued by the Ohio Department of Health.  He had to get another copy of his birth certificate. Read more »

An old one of mine . . .

Cathy Wilkinson of Blue Ridge turned 60 last month, and along with that milestone came a pesky necessity: renewing her Virginia driver’s license. Her adventure might make for a good episode of “Seinfeld.”

After three trips to the Department of Motor Vehicles, one visit to the post office and a flurry of phone calls to New York, she is $38 poorer. But she finally triumphed over the indifferent bureaucracy.

Wilkinson offers this cautionary advice: Whatever you do, renew your license before it expires, or you may be in for the hassle she went through.

The retired Roanoke County schoolteacher has lived in Virginia since 1974, when she moved here from New York to attend Roanoke College.

“I’ve had a license for 42 years,” she said. “No tickets, no accidents.”

READ THE REST OF THIS COLUMN HERE.

George Orwell | Wikimedia Commons

In the novel 1984, the author George Orwell invented a new word. It was called Newspeak, and here is the Wikipedia’s explanation of what it is:

“This suits the totalitarian regime of the Party, whose aim is to make any alternative thinking—”thoughtcrime”, or “crimethink” in the newest edition of Newspeak—impossible by removing any words or possible constructs which describe the ideas of freedom, rebellion and so on. One character, Syme, says admiringly of the shrinking volume of the new dictionary: “It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.”

Republicans in the Virginia General Assembly — an in North Carolina, too — appear to have followed that lead. I call their genre “GOPspeak.” In devising a bill for a $50,000 study of rising sea levels along the Virginia’s coast, they deliberate rewrote it to avoid terms that are apparently too politically charged — such as “sea level rise” or “climate change.”

From a story in The Virginian  Pilot by my old pal Scott Harper, one of the best reporters anywhere:

State lawmakers ran into a problem this year when recommending a study on rising sea levels and their potential impacts on coastal Virginia.

It was not a scientific problem or a financial one. It was linguistic.

They discovered that they could not use the phrases “sea level rise” or “climate change” in requesting the study, in part because of objections from Republican colleagues and also for fear of stirring up conservative activists, some of whom believe such terms are liberal code words.

But wait, Scott’s story gets even better. One lawmaker, Del. Chris Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, told the paper that “sea level rise” is a “left-wing term.” Read more »

Yesterday I told you about a budget amendment from Gov. Bob McDonnell that would have left a majority of Virginia’s senior citizens service agencies (which provide programs such as Meals on Wheels) in a financially shaky straights.

Today, the governor withdrew his amendment. Advocates for seniors are overjoyed.

From McDonnell’s press office:

The governor’s decision to request that the amendment be withdrawn was made following input from a number of groups and care providers that a change to the existing formula to account for population shifts would have a disproportionate effect on the work done by Area Agencies in a number of Virginia communities. The governor believes these agencies do tremendous work and he supports their efforts. He is committed to ensuring they are well funded. He appreciates the information received over the past week and believes that it is in the best interest of Virginia’s seniors to keep the system in-place as it currently exists.

If the amendment had gone through, the LOA Area Office on Aging would have lost about $90,000 in funding for the coming budget year. With the amendment withdrawn, they stand to lost about $37,000 in funding compared to the current year.

But they’ve already made plans to cover that (hopefully) with a fundraiser called “Let’s Do Lunch,” that I’ll be telling you more about in June.

So stay tuned!

Dwight Burdette | Wikimedia Commons

Ron Adkins was on the phone Thursday and he was fit to be tied. He’s a former insurance broker, bail bondsman and bar owner from the Cave Spring area. He’s also a landlord and player in Roanoke County Republican politics.

He launched his spiel with “I’m no bleeding-heart liberal,” which is perhaps the understatement of the year. “I’m a Republican and I’m a conservative. But when it comes to people not eating, that’s where I draw the line.”

Adkins and many others around Virginia are incensed by one of 88 amendments that Gov. Bob McDonnell has proposed to the state budget. It would eliminate a $2.5 million appropriation the General Assembly included in the 2013-15 state budget for 15 of Virginia’s 25 regional offices on aging, which provide human services to the state’s homebound seniors.

Furious advocates for seniors have deluged state lawmakers’ offices with phone calls and email about this issue.

“This is by far the most feedback we’ve gotten on any amendment,” said Del. Greg Habeeb, R-Salem. Along with Del. Chris Head, R-Botetourt Co., he was one of the lawmakers who added the extra $2.5 million in senior-agency funding into the budget.

The legislature will vote Monday on that amendment and the others. And hanging in the balance is money for already cash-strapped service agencies.

The appropriation is necessary because of a new formula the Virginia Department for the Aging is using to allocate federal money for senior-service programs. That’s based on the U.S. census count of elderly, poor and minority residents in different parts of the state.

The fact is, the senior citizen population grew in all 25 of Virginia’s senior agency regions. But according the census, it grew more in Northern Virginia than it did elsewhere. So the flow of money has been redirected.

READ THE REST OF THIS COLUMN HERE.

The con man known as 'Bobby Thompson' during his high-flying days as a major Republican political donor (left) and shortly following his capture in Portland, Ore. by U.S. Marshals Monday night. He contributed $67,500 to six Virginia lawmakers in 2009 in a successful effort to get a law passed by the Virginia General Assembly in 2010. | Photos courtesy the Ohio Attorney General and the U.S. Marshals Service.

Following a manhunt that lasted nearly two years, U.S. Marshals arrested ‘Bobby Thompson’ without a whimper Monday night after he left a bar in Portland, Ore.

Authorities still don’t know the alleged Florida con man’s real identity. They believe he’s in his mid 60s. He’s charged with defrauding Ohio citizens of $2 million for his phony charity, the U.S. Navy Veterans Association. It reportedly raised $100 million across the country and spent a pittance on veterans.

For that and other reasons, the feds also are investigating. And if Thompson’s capture is causing some gut rumbles in Richmond, it’s not hard to understand why.

Because it was here in the Old Dominion that the Florida man pulled off one of his most audacious flimflams. He bought himself a law in the 2010 Virginia General Assembly that would benefit his scam.

And many questions remain about how he was able to manage that.

READ THE REST OF THIS COLUMN HERE.

Jaquen | Wikimedia Commons | Text by Dan

MEMO
To: Public schoolteachers
From: The commonwealth of Virginia

Dear teachers,

Thank you for your service. You do an amazing job. Every school day, you expand the minds of children who want to be taught, and gracefully handle the young hellions who don’t.

You’re working many nights, too, coaching school athletics, grading papers or writing lesson plans, while the rest of us watch “Dancing With the Stars” or “American Idol” or shows about commercial fishermen in Alaska.

You take pride in understanding that education is about the future. Quite literally, you’re preparing the minds of the people who will be leading this commonwealth in the decades to come.

For all of the above, the taxpayers of Virginia owe you a big, fat “thanks.” So give yourselves 150 pats on the back as we segue into the not-so-pleasant subject of your pensions.

TO READ THE REST OF THIS COLUMN CLICK HERE.

Del. Ben Cline, R-Rockbridge

Note from Dan: Ann Huebner Waller is a mother of three who lives in Lexington and who takes great issue with Del. Ben Cline, R-Rockbridge, over the issue of shackling female jail inmates who are pregnant, or in labor, during transit to a hospital. A bill that would have prevented these tactics was killed this year in a House of Delegates subcommittee that Cline chairs, after he raised the question, “Do you agree choices have consequences?” — which many took as a suggestion those women deserve such harsh treatment.

By Ann Huebner Waller

I know you have written about Delegate Ben Cline’s role in torpedoing HB 836, the bill that would have prevented the shackling of female prisoners during labor.

Not sure if you are aware of the most recent wrinkle:  Last week Cline sent a letter to our local papers in Lexington and Rockbridge County, saying he was “misrepresented in the press” and is actually against the shackling of inmates during labor.

From the Rockbridge Weekly:

Therefore, let me set the record straight on the issue of pregnant prisoners: I oppose the use of shackles on female prisoners during labor.

In fact, I have been a strong supporter of the current regulatory action by the Virginia Department of Corrections to prohibit such treatment in Virginia’s jails. This regulatory action was described to us in February during a meeting of the Public Safety Subcommittee that I chair in the House of Delegates. During this meeting, we also considered a bill (HB 836) that would have restricted the use of restraints on pregnant prisoners. Unfortunately, the bill was drafted too broadly and would have led to potentially dangerous situations for law enforcement and for the public.

As Chairman, my first responsibility is to ensure that the laws we pass do not endanger public safety. Therefore, I must ask critical questions about every bill that comes before us, even the ones with goals that I may support. My questions of the witnesses during the hearing were primarily related to the dangers created by the bill.

The interesting thing is the hearings were VIDEOTAPED (the videos are below).  I’m wondering if you feel, as I do, that Cline seriously misrepresents the bill and his role in torpedoing it.

In his letter, Cline says the bill was drafted “too broadly” and would have led to dangerous situations for law enforcement and public.  Specifically, he says: Read more »