2012.05.15
Thou shalt not (be a gay) judge in Virginia UPDATED
Tracy Thorne-Begland | AP Photo
Most if not all of you by now know that very early Tuesday morning, the Virginia House of Delegates ditched the nomination of a gay prosecutor from Richmond to be a General District Court judge — because he was gay.
Tracy Thorne-Begland would have been the state’s first openly gay jurist, but opposition to his nomination was led by Del. Bob Marshall, R-Manassas, the most openly homophobic lawmaker in the Virginia General Assembly.
Thorne-Begland is a former Navy fighter pilot who lives with a partner and with whom he has adopted two children. It’s a travesty, though not completely unsurprising in Virginia, that Virginia House of Delegates would use his sexual orientation as a reason to discriminate against him.
Thorne-Begland needed 51 votes, a simple majority of the 100-member house, for confirmation. But his nomination mustered only 33.
In the spirit of public interest I’m listing the roll-call vote on his nomination below, and each name is a hot link to the email address of the lawmaker listed (if I was able to find the email address). Click on a name and you’ll be able to send those lawmakers a message telling them what you think about their votes, or nonvotes. (If you use web-based email, such as Gmail or Yahoo, you can right-click on the name to copy the address).
Here’s a breakdown of h0w that vote went down: Read more »
A road less traveled on the Tuesday OPEN thread
Shot by Dan Friday on Prospect Road on Mill Mountain
“I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
Robert Frost
Folks, if you haven’t taken a stroll up the “old road” on Mill Mountain (Prospect Road) you owe it to yourself to do it soon.
2012.05.14
So what if you fired someone because he was heterosexual?
I appreciate the point of the folks who produced the video below, in which Rep. James Lankford, R-Oklahoma, announced that employers should be able to fire gay employees.
But truly, they asked the question the wrong way. The REAL question ought to be: “Should en employee be subject to being fired because they are straight?”
Because, if homosexuality is indeed matter of “choice,” then that means heterosexuals “chose” to be straight as well. And if an employer ought to be able to fire someone because of their sexual orientation, then every straight employee’s job is on the line, too. That means nobody would ever have any job protection.
Keep in mind that to date I have never had even a half-decent answer from a heterosexual describing the moment when they chose to be straight.
Bain shareholders did fine. Workers? Not so much UPDATED
For many good reasons, the GOP has so far resisted going after President Obama full-bore on the issue of gay marriage. Instead, they’ve tried hard to keep the message on jobs and the economy.
But the ad by the Obama campaign, below, focusing on Mitt Romney’s leadership of Bain Captital, is what Republicans are up against on that count. The real campaigning hasn’t even started yet. This makes it appear as if it will be a long summer.
And below is the video the Romney campaign responded with, about Steel Dynamics, for which Bain used $37 million in government subsidies and grants to get off the ground:
Newsflash! Gov. McDonnell withdraws anti-seniors’ amendment
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!
Guarding the garden on the Monday OPEN thread
Shot by Dan Saturday in Grandin Court
“We are stardust,
We are golden,
And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.”
Joni Mitchell
(The link is to the CSN&Y version, which I like a lot better.)
Sunday’s column: An SOS for senior services
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.
2012.05.12
A sunny Saturday OPEN thread
Shot by Dan at Grandin Gardins, on Grandin Road
“The Sun in London ran a front page declaring my bum a national treasure. I really did laugh at that. Its not like it can actually do anything, except wiggle.”
Kylie Minogue
I’m out in the sun today, folks. Will catch up with the comments later.
