Category Archives: Politics

Oh, The Tangled Webs We Weave

Posted on August 16, 2018 by | 3 comments

Before President Frank Underwood there was P.M. Francis Urquhart. He was not amused by amateurs.

Let’s not and say we did.

If I had a dollar for every time I said that to some over-enthusiastic campaign worker for my candidate or some other one with some wild idea to screw with the other side….

Perhaps GOP Congressman Scott Taylor should have used the phrase, or my other favorite:  Don’t do anything you don’t want to read about in the newspaper.

Now we are being subjected to a daily barrage of stories about how the Second District representative’s campaign staff circulated the petitions to get independent challenger Shaun Brown on the November ballot.  After Brown lost the Democratic nomination and went away mad, it was logical to keep her candidacy alive as a thorn in the side of Democratic nominee Elaine Luria.

Some Taylor fan passed Brown’s petitions around the office of fellow Republican and Virginia Beach Sheriff Ken Stolle gathering a large number of signatures, earning this story in today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch.

My personal practice has always been to sign most candidates’ petitions, if I’m a qualified voter in the correct district.  It is not a pledge to vote for that person.  I’ve signed for many a Democrat, independent or Green.  Having been the person circulating the petitions I know it is a hard process, and as a believer in our election system I support people’s efforts to run.

There is also a long history of both parties’ finding and encouraging independent candidates intended to split the opponent’s vote.  Everybody does it, but usually with plausible deniability.  Well, that’s out the window in this case.

If the petitions for Luria were signed by enough properly-registered voters in that district, even if they were active Republicans, serving sheriff’s deputies, or known cranks, she might remain on the ballot.  If not one actual Democrat signed, it matters not.

If those circulating the petitions witnessed and attested to the signatures of false names, or the names of deceased persons, or filled in names themselves, they should face the full consequences under the law – which are considerable.  Doing that will have brought dishonor on themselves, their candidate and the process itself.

Whether all of this will hurt Taylor and boost Luria come November is impossible to say now, but it is the kind of distraction which is never good for any campaign.  At some point well before this got out of hand somebody in authority should have sat back, laughed, and said – let’s not actually do this, folks.  And if the decision was to go forward anyway, the mantra should have been – break absolutely no rules and smile and deny nothing when caught.

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Posted in Electoral process, Politics

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Goodbye and Good Riddance to Goodlatte

Commentary - Posted on August 6, 2018 by | 10 comments

Carpetbagger. Bob Goodlatte is the 13-term congressman from Virginia’s 6th Congressional District who has blessedly chosen to retire this year. In my opinion he represents just about everything that is wrong with the GOP. Born in Holyoke, Massachusetts and educated at Bates College in Maine, Goodlatte somehow avoids the “carpetbagger” moniker so quickly put on Terry McAuliffe by Virginia’s Republicans. He won his congressional seat at age 39 and has spent the last 26 years in Congress. Yet he goes uncriticized as a “politician for life” by the conservative Newt Gingrich types who claim to eschew such long running elected officials. He is a polluter’s best friend with apparently no concern for the property rights of those negatively affected by the pollution he justifies and defends. However, he’ll be gone soon and you’d think we’re past the damage done by this phony conservative. Oh no.  Even in his final days in office Goodlatte is actively denying people protection of their property rights despite “property rights” supposedly being a core tenet of conservative Republican dogma. What a farce.

Blowing up the blueprint. The Chesapeake Bay represents not only a national treasure but a working laboratory for the protection of property rights. Certainly right thinking conservatives must believe that allowing a small minority of people and corporations to pollute a public waterway unfairly takes away the property rights of non-polluters. In the case of a waterway that borders multiple states, one would think that sensible and honest conservatives would insist that the federal government protect the property rights of all the states.  Isn’t this both a core tenet of conservatism and a reasonable construct of property rights?  Not according to Bob Goodlatte.

The Chesapeake Bay watershed states have claimed to be working together to clean up the Bay for the past forty years. For 31 of those years the effort failed as various states simply ignored their clean up commitments. Then, in 2009, the EPA was authorized to provide scientific leadership and oversight for a new clean-up plan — the Chesapeake Bay Clean Water Blueprint. Progress has been substantial since that time. Despite Virginia being a major beneficiary of the blueprint, one of our own Congressmen has put forth an amendment to curtail the EPA’s role in this effort.  You guessed it, ole Bob Goodlatte sponsored an amendment to H.R. 6147 forbidding the EPA from spending money to provide firm, science-based accountability over the blueprint. As a press release from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation puts it, “Congressman Goodlatte’s amendment would keep EPA from using any funds to provide this “firm accountability” if a state fails to meet its pollution-reduction goals set under the Blueprint.” So much for preservation of property rights from this so-called conservative.

Hall of shame. Bob Goodlatte’s amendment for the protection of raw sewage in public waters passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 213 to 202.  Seven of Virginia’s Representatives (Wittman, Taylor, Scott, McEachin, Beyer, Comstock and Connolly) repudiated Sideshow Bob and his amendment by voting against it. However, four of our so-called representatives (Garrett, Goodlatte, Brat and Griffith) couldn’t find the mental acuity to understand how a clean Chesapeake Bay might help the Commonwealth of Virginia. While it’s no excuse for their buffoonery Garrett, Goodlatte and Griffith have districts far from the Bay. Brat, by comparison, has a district bordering the city of Richmond. What are the voters in the 7th district thinking? Will “Kepone Dave” get re-elected? Here’s a good article about the cleanliness of the James River in Richmond (warning: true but disgusting content)

Going forward. The congressional seat being vacated by Bob Goodlatte’s retirement will be contested by Ben Cline (R) and Jennifer Lewis (D). Cline is a member of the General Assembly and long time Goodlatte toady. Lewis is a bleeding heart liberal with minimal political experience. So far, Lewis has raised $72,000 to Cline’s $787,000. The Cook Partisan Voter Index for the district is R+13. Sadly, Cline will almost certainly win and continue the anti-conservative, anti-Virginia activities of his predecessor.

— Don Rippert 

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Posted in Commentary, Environment, Federal, Individual rights, Politics, Regulation, Water-waste water

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Updates: Money, Power and Politics (Oh, My)

Commentary - Posted on July 20, 2018 by | 15 comments

The following are updates on earlier Bacon’s Rebellion stories of mine.

Clean Virginia Files First Report

Clean Virginia Fund, the political action committee that is trying to buy legislators’ loyalty away from regulated utilities, has filed its first report with the State Board of Elections.  Charlottesville financier and hedge fund magnate Michael D. Bills is the only donor, putting in $50,000.  Two senators and nine delegates, all Democrats, accepted a total of $32,500.  Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power donated a combined $175,000 during the same period so if this is really a bidding war, Clean Virginia has some catching up to do.

Hunton Andrews Kurth, the Richmond law and lobbying firm, is off to a slow start, giving only $23,000 on this report.  The firm drew notice for saying it would not support legislators who refused donations from its utility client.  Its largest check was to the Democratic Commonwealth Victory Fund, which supports both House and Senate candidates in that party.  (Dominion Energy gave to that, too.)

Somehow I don’t think any of the legislators who are refusing corporate or utility dollars will refuse help from that party committee. The check was probably to attend the Democrat’s annual event at the Homestead, where I’m sure all had a nice chin wag over the bar or on the golf course.

Dominion Energy Doubles Down on T1 Rider Taxes

Responding to an adverse recommendation from a State Corporation Commission hearing examiner, Dominion Energy has filed comments asking the full commission to ignore her opinion and make the customers pay too much.

Its first and most important argument is that the commission doesn’t have the authority to exercise discretion over the future transmission charges under rate adjustment clause T1.  It points to language in the 2007 statute that created this RAC and the whole system of RACs.  In the case of transmission costs under T1 the language says that any bill from regional transmission entity PJM is presumed to be reasonable and prudent.

This isn’t about the taxes, it’s about that language.  That “reasonable and prudent” presumption is even more frequent in the statute now, thanks to the 2018 legislation.  This is once again proof that Dominion inserts that phrase (and it writes these bills, no legislator does) to override the judgement of the SCC.  Those of us who worked on that 2007 statute never contemplated that Dominion would take advantage of that presumption to self-calculate its charge based on false information – in this case an erroneous tax rate.

If the SCC stands with its hearing examiner, expect the utility to take the battle back to the Virginia Supreme Court or back to its friendly legislators.  Once again, as it has been for more than a decade, the only real issue is will the legislature listen to the SCC or let the utility make it own laws and rules.

The AG Giveth, the AG Taketh Away

Attorney General Mark Herring has notably been a bit less predictable than many previous AG’s on the question of who his client is, if the state law or regulatory position he would normally defend was highly unpopular with various interest groups.

He earned praise in many circles recently for deciding to have his staff defend certain abortion-related regulations, but now has decided to not let his staff join in the appeal of a recent decision on legislative districts and the Voting Rights Act.  The Republican legislators seeking a delay on drawing a new map pending that appeal will need to fund their own legal efforts.

Continue reading →

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Posted in Commentary, Energy, Money in politics, Politics, Race and race relations

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The Va. Political Class in Action: Tidewater Edition

Posted on July 19, 2018 by | 2 comments

Shaun Brown

From the Daily Press: Federal prosecutors say they have evidence of congressional candidate Shaun Brown, a Democrat running as an independent, of “lying to an investor and falsifying campaign finance information to the Federal Elections Commission (FEC).”

Brown currently faces charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and causing false records, wire fraud, theft of government property and asset forfeiture. The charges are related to a company she runs that is reimbursed for providing food to low-income children in the summer. …

Prosecutors claim to have evidence that Brown falsely reported giving — and being reimbursed for — more than $700,000 to her campaign for the 2nd congressional district, which runs from Williamsburg to Virginia Beach. …

The U.S. Attorney’s Office also claimed to have evidence that in 2014, Brown and another person convinced a third person — identified only as “S.P.” — to invest $100,000 in JOBS Community Outreach Development Corp., the company Brown runs that helps give low-income kids meals in the summer, when they’re not in school, through a program called Summer Food Service Program. Brown said S.P. would get a return of $750,000 within a year, but S.P. said no money has been returned, according to what prosecutors claim in the court filing. …

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia claims that Brown directed her company to inflate the number of children they actually fed to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Virginia Department of Health, which help reimburse companies for their costs. Prosecutors have also accused Brown of falsifying documents in order to get more money from the government.

The list of particulars goes on, but you get the idea. Brown’s jury trial starts July 24 in Norfolk. Helluva way to conduct a congressional campaign!

Note: This article has been corrected to note that Brown, though a Democrat, is running as an independent.

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Posted in Crime and corrections, Efficiency in government, Politics

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Saul Trumpinsky – Donald Trump and Saul Alinsky

Commentary - Posted on July 18, 2018 by | 8 comments

Yes Virginia, there is a United States. Most posts published on this blog are dedicated to Virginia-specific issues. This post is an exception. It is an attempt to understand the unexpected popularity of Donald Trump. While all states are impacted by the federal government and national politics, Virginia is perhaps the most affected state. The proximity of Northern Virginia to the nation’s capital as well as the military influence over Hampton Roads’ economy make the federal government particularly important to Virginia. So it behooves us to understand the president and how the heck he got elected.

Saul who? Saul Alinsky was a Chicago-born community organizer and writer. He was best known for his book Rules for Radicals published in 1971. Even before his famous (or infamous) book Alinsky was on the political radar. In 1966 William F. Buckley wrote an article in his “On the Right” column calling Alinsky an iconoclast and “close to being an organizational genius.” However, as would be the case with many critics on the left and right, Buckley ultimately found Alinsky’s approach ineffective. Famously, Hillary Clinton’s undergraduate thesis was a 92-page critique of Mr. Alinsky and his methods. Back in 1969, 22-year-old Clinton was sympathetic to Alinsky’s concerns but ultimately found his approach ineffective. Even Hoover’s FBI kept a close eye on Alinsky during the late 1960s. But the 1960s came and went and Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals was written and discussed, and then faded from view. There were momentary flare-ups around Hillary Clinton becoming First Lady and Barack Obama becoming president. However, Alinsky was largely relegated to those creaky crevices of the cultural cranium as a curious cartoon-like character. Or … was he?

Donald Trump and the resurrection of Saul Alinsky. As far back as early 2016 the right wing-media outlet Newsmax began to see parallels between Donald Trump’s approach as a candidate and Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. After being elected some of President Trump’s conservative critics continued to associate Trump’s actions with the Alinsky brand. Could it be? Could this odd collection of #neverTrumpers have unraveled the secret to Donald Trump’s inexplicable election success? Is he simply following Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals? Repeated searches of Trumpian philosophy found no fond commentary by The Donald for The Saul. However, there are many points of commonality between Trump and Alinsky.

A baker’s dozen.  Alinsky outlines 13 specific rules in his book. Donald Trump is following 12 of them. To wit (along with the Trump translation or Trumplation):

  1. “Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.” (Trumplation: constant exaggeration.)
  2. “Never go outside the expertise of your people.” (Trumplation: Make America Great Again. A simple, understandable motto.)
  3. “Whenever possible go outside the expertise of the enemy.” (Trumplation: Canada’s 243% tariff on U.S. dairy products … who knew?)
  4. “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” (Trumplation: Slam Hillary Clinton for taking millions for giving speeches to banks.)
  5. “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” (Trumplation: Crooked Hillary, Corrupt Kaine.)
  6. “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” (Trumplation: campaign speeches that look like revival meetings, “deplorables” as a badge of honor.”)
  7. “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” Trumplation: (Whatever happened to the NFL kneeling “controversy”?)
  8. “Keep the pressure on.” (Trumplation: From North Korea to the EU to London to Helsinki backed by an unending chorus of tweets.)
  9. “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.”  (Trumplation: Nominate me or I’ll go third party.)
  10. “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.”  (Trumplation: One Donald Trump tweeting, many Democrats attempting to rebut.)
  11. “If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside” (Trumplation: Forget my business deals, look at Crooked Hillary, Crooked Hillary, Crooked Hillary …)
  12. “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.”  (Trumplation: The only rule he seems to have missed although GDP growth through corporate tax cuts might be an example.)
  13. “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”  (Trumplation: target individuals not institutions – Carmen Yulin Cruz, Stephen Colbert, Megyn Kelly.)

Advise to President Trump. Read Hillary’s thesis. She did get an “A”. Alinsky’s tactics work well at first but fail to create a lasting unity among their adherents. They generate notoriety at a rapid rate but the momentum doesn’t last. Charles “the Hammer” Martel may have defeated the Moors at Tours but it was his grandson King Charles (aka Charlemagne or “Charles the Great”) who forged an empire. Hammers are forgotten while greatness is not. Hammer time is over. What’s next Mr. President? You’ve taken the rules for radicals as far as they will go. It’s time to start writing “lessons for leaders.”

— Don Rippert

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Posted in Commentary, Elections, Federal, Governance, Politics, Uncategorized

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“Pterodactyl Tim” Kaine Watch: Lying about SCOTUS Nominee

Posted on July 8, 2018 by | 33 comments

The Age of Innocence.  Tim Kaine was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, but grew up in Overland Park, Kansas. All that folksy Midwestern-ness seemed to imbue Kaine with a decency and honesty that people noticed. One imagines a young man so innocent and naive that he would sneak behind the barn and do nothing. Kaine even interrupted his studies at Harvard Law to help Jesuit missionaries in Honduras run the prophetically named El Progresso School.

Once upon a time in Virginia. Tim Kaine entered politics the old fashioned way – he married into it. While at Harvard, Kaine met his future wife, the daughter of former Virginia governor Linwood Holton. From there Kaine’s political career proceeded rapidly. 1994 – Richmond City Council, 1998 – Mayor of Richmond, 2001 – Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, 2005 – Governor of Virginia. Through all of those Virginia-based positions Kaine was seen as diligent and likable, even by those who disagreed with his leftist views.

Creature from the black lagoon. Kaine’s journey to the dark side began when he became the chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 2009. He was no longer operating within the corrupt-but-friendly confines of the bourbon-and-branch water set in Richmond. Now he was dealing with the mentally deranged, venomous reptiles-from-hell in the D.C. swamp. He went from Timmy the Sweet to the Lizard of Oz. His election as U.S. Senator from Virginia in 2013 may have pulled him from the deepest cesspool of Washington’s primordial ooze but he was about to make a move that would cement his position as a central character from the original Star Wars cantina scene.

When you lie down with dogs … …you get up with fleas. In the case of being Hillary Clinton’s running mate – bionic, radioactive killer fleas that infect their host dog with an overwhelming addiction to misrepresentation, deceit and outright lying. Pterodactyl Timmy was hatched in the nest of the high-flying reptiles of the Clinton crime family.

No such Gorsuch. After conversion to the reptilian class Kaine unleashed one of his most outlandish lies. Aiming his beady lizard gaze at then-Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch Kaine claimed on Twitter that,

He has cavalierly referred to contraceptive use – a constitutionally protected right for 50+ yrs – as ‘the wrongdoing of others.’

Kaine’s quote refers to an opinion then Judge Gorsuch wrote in the famous (or infamous) Hobby Lobby case. He was trying to describe how the owners of the Hobby Lobby company felt about contraceptives. In no way, shape or form could anybody have interpreted Gorsuch’s words as being his own opinion of contraceptives. You can find Judge Gorsuch’s opinion here. You can read Mark Hemmingway’s take on the incident here. In true swamp-dweller fashion Kaine hoped that by telling the big lie he could perhaps sideswipe Neil Gorsuch’s nomination. In this case it turned out Kaine’s dishonesty was exceeded only by his incompetence. Neil Gorsuch is now a member of the U.S. Supreme Court.

General orders. Kaine could have simply apologized, perhaps claiming that Twitter was a poorly chosen vehicle for expressing that opinion. But he didn’t. Instead, he wrote a six-page explanation with a 1,000 word summary of how his lie was actually unvarnished truth. Kaine could have saved himself some time by studying General George Washington. It was he who said, “It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.” Unfortunately, Pterodactyl Timmy couldn’t find that quote in his bag of carpet. His bad excuse fell on deaf ears. Ramesh Ponnuru over at Bloomberg was having none of it.

Here we go again. On Monday President Trump will put forth his nominee to fill the Supreme Court vacancy caused by Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement. Will the high-flying reptile of the D.C. swamp (Pterodactyl Timmy) be able to refrain from further lies about this nominee? Let’s hope so. The last three former governors of Virginia have been Pterodactyl Timmy, Rolex Bob and Terry McCronyCapitalism (whatever happened to that golf cart company, anyway?).  We’re getting a bad reputation.

— Don Rippert

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Posted in Courts and law, Elections, Politics

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Revisiting Virginia’s Public Accommodation Laws

Posted on June 27, 2018 by | 4 comments

Virginia is for lovers haters. A sad scene unfolded in Lexington, Va., last Friday evening. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, President Trump’s press secretary, tried to enjoy a meal with her family at the Red Hen restaurant. The owner, a New York transplant named Stephanie Wilkinson, asked the Sanders party to leave the restaurant after starting their appetizers. Wilkinson claims that she spoke with the staff at her restaurant and they jointly decided to ask the Sanders party to leave. This was done because of Ms. Sanders employment by the Trump Administration.

However, Ms. Wilkinson’s account of the event is at odds with what really happened. In an interview with the Washington Post Wilkinson said, “I am not a huge fan of confrontation,” in an effort to justify her confrontation with the Sanders party. However, subsequent to her Mahatma Gandhi impersonation it has come out that Wilkinson’s confrontation of the Sanders party didn’t stop at the Red Hen restaurant. During a talk radio interview Sanders’ father, former Governor Huckabee, related the rest of the story. After being tossed out of the Red Hen Sarah Sanders and her husband left their group. As the remainder of the group went to another restaurant Wilkinson followed them somehow arranging for people to continue the harassment at the new restaurant. It seems that Ms. Wilkinson is not only a huge fan of confrontation but a huge fan of the liberal art of lying through her teeth as well. I have looked and found no refutation of Sen Huckabee’s account of the story by Ms. Wilkinson. Following a group of people from restaurant to restaurant is certainly confrontational but is it stalking? Stalking is a crime in Virginia. The applicable code can be found here.

Let’s add knucklehead to the list. The original party at the Red Hen consisted of Ms Sanders, her husband and some of her in-laws. Her in-laws are described as liberals who do not support the Trump Administration. Therefore, the people Wilkinson followed and harassed were a bunch of anti-Trump liberals. So, at the second restaurant, a group of Trump-opposing liberals were harassing a group of Trump-opposing liberals. It seems we can safely add knucklehead to the list of adjectives describing Ms. Wilkinson.

The other Red Hen. In the City of Washington, D.C., there is another Red Hen restaurant with no affiliation to the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Va. People, presumably conservatives, who wanted to counter-protest the actions of Wilkinson managed to become knuckleheads themselves. The D.C.-based Red Hen restaurant has been “tarred and feathered” by people trying to protest Ms Sanders’ treatment at a wholly different restaurant located 200 miles away.  Interestingly, Ms. Sanders would not have been turned away from the Red Hen in Washington, D.C., since that city forbids discrimination in a public accommodation based on political affiliation. You can find the code here. The city of Seattle and the U.S. Virgin Islands have similar bans on discrimination based on political affiliation.

Has anybody seen my governor? If Ralph Northam maintained any lower of a profile his face would start appearing on milk cartons trying to locate our lost governor. The Red Hen incident happened in Virginia. Where is Virginia’s governor with his take on this? A web search of “Ralph Northam” and “Red Hen” produces no relevant results. Is this incident at the Red Hen restaurant how Virginia wants to be seen? Does public harassment help our “Virginia is for Lovers” image? I think not. Should Virginia broaden its public accommodation law to be more like D.C., Seattle and the USVI? I think so. While I’d hope that proper Virginians wouldn’t bring shame to the Commonwealth by refusing service to somebody based on their political affiliation, I have to recognize that carpetbagging asshats like Stephanie Wilkinson will do just that. Time to squelch this now.

— Don Rippert

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Posted in Children and families, Consumer protection, Crime and corrections, Politics, Regulation, Uncategorized

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Will the Real Corey Stewart Please Stand Up?

Posted on June 25, 2018 by | 7 comments

Minnesota Confederate? Corey Stewart was born in Duluth, Minnesota. He grew up in Minnesota attending St. Olaf College before transferring to Georgetown University to finish his BS degree. He then went back to Minnesota to attend law school before moving permanently to Northern Virginia. So it comes as something of a surprise that this transplanted Minnesotan has such a taste for the Confederate flag. Corey Stewart is a hard man to categorize.

Take my wife, please. Corey Stewart was first elected to the Prince William County Board of Supervisors in 2003 at the relatively young age of 35. Three years later he became the Chairman of the PWC BoS, a position he still holds. His initial notoriety came from the aggressive anti-illegal immigrant posture taken by the entire PWC BoS starting in 2007. The board allowed county police to check the immigration status of anyone, even if the person in question was not suspected of any wrongdoing. The board then cut off all county aid to illegal immigrants. While some say Stewart is anti-immigrant, there is apparently one immigrant that Stewart likes – his wife Maria. Maria is from Sweden and met Corey while they were both teaching English in Japan. Why am I suddenly hearing Chuck Berry lyrics in my head … “I met a German girl in England who was going to school in France”?

If at first you don’t succeed. Stewart is a fixture as Chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors. He’s won four elections to that post getting 57% of the vote in the last of these elections (2015). However, he failed to get the Republican nomination for Lt Governor in 2013, was fired by the Trump Campaign from his post of Virginia campaign manager in 2016 and failed to get the Republican nomination for Governor in 2017. Today, he has won the Republican nomination for US Senate and is running against Tim Kaine. Stewart is widely expected to lose.

Unusual behavior. During his run for Governor Stewart gave away an AR-15 for Christmas. When asked why he was giving away an AR-15, Stewart said that he just couldn’t find a man portable mini-gun to give away. Actually he never said that. However, he did claim in a March, 2018 tweet that that you’re more likely to be killed by Hillary Clinton than an AR-15. During 2017 he used his position on the PWC BoS to support the construction of a mosque in the so-called Rural Crescent area of Prince William County. He was singled out for thanks by the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS).  He also faced a recall petition for supporting the Mosque. After losing the Governor’s primary to Ed Gillespie Stewart took to Reddit to call Gillespie a “cuckservative” but then went on to support Gillespie’s campaign.

A hard man to summarize. Stewart is the Minnesota Confederate who supposedly hates immigrants but is married to one. He pushes anti-illegal immigrant laws while supporting the construction of a mosque at risk to his own political career. He can’t lose as BoS Chairman but can’t win much of anything else. He gratuitously insults opponents from his own party and then endorses them for office. He pals around with ultra-right winger Paul Nehlen and then repudiates him after finding out that Nehlen issued anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic tweets in 2016.

Conclusion? I have no conclusion. Corey Stewart is a paradox shrouded in inconsistency while wearing dichotomy’s clothes. I’ll wait for this election to play out a bit more before making a final judgement on Corey Stewart. However, if I were a hashtag artist today I’d have to consider #loon, #sloppy, #impulse_control_issues. But I don’t buy #racist.

— Don Rippert

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Posted in Crime and corrections, Elections, Immigration, Politics

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Virginia Is for Psychos

Posted on June 19, 2018 by | 10 comments

I don’t know how good the social science is, but this is too good to pass up. A study by Ryan H. Murphy, an economics professor at Southern Methodist University, has ranked the 48 contiguous U.S. states by “psychopathy,” or anti-social behavior.

It is disconcerting to see the Old Dominion ranking No. 10 on the list. Are Virginians that whacko? Perhaps so — and I have a theory to explain it. Murphy eliminated Washington, D.C., from the ranking because its standardized score was off the carts — almost twice as high as the highest-ranking state, Connecticut. My theory is that psychopathic behavior in D.C. spills over into the Maryland and Virginia suburbs. Please note that Maryland is ranked No. 11, right behind Virginia. I hypothesize that the Old Dominion’s score was diluted by regions of state that are sociologically similar to neighboring North Carolina, West Virginia, and Tennessee, among the least psycho states in the country. If we could isolate Northern Virginia, we would find that it is almost as loco as D.C.

Treading where Murphy dared not go, I have correlated each state’s psychopathology “Z score” with its vote for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

Clearly, there is correlation between psychopathy and voting for Hillary! The R² suggests that 27% of the variability between states can be explained by the relationship between the two variables. Haha!

Hey, don’t look at me. It’s not my data. I’m just plotting the correlation.

OK, OK, I’m peddling junk science. There may be other explanations. Except for the outlier of Wyoming, there appears to be a strong correlation between urban states and the presence of anti-social traits in the population. Urban centers are more transient than small towns and rural areas. People are more anonymous and have weaker social bonds. For entirely distinct reasons, urban areas also lean left politically. The correlation is between psychopathy and urbanism, not psychopathy and liberalism.

If we could show that the psychopaths, not the urban populations where they live, vote for Democrats, we might on to something. Until then, I’m just playfully engaging in the same kind of nonsense as social scientists who purport to show that liberals are smarter, better informed or otherwise more virtuous than conservatives.

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Posted in Demographics, Politics

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A Trump-Stewart Republican Party?

Posted on June 14, 2018 by | 16 comments

Map credit: Virginia Public Access Project

What do we make of Corey Stewart’s nomination as Republican candidate to run against Tim Kaine for the U.S. Senate seat? Does Stewart’s narrow victory portend a reshaping of the Republican Party of Virginia along more populist, Trumpian lines?

I think a fundamental political realignment could be occurring, but the outcome hinges on events yet to unfold. A lot will depend on what happens to President Trump. If his administration collapses in scandal, as it very well could, so does the populist movement within the Virginia GOP. If, on the other hand, Trump is vindicated in the “Russia collusion” concoction, if the machinations of the Deep State are revealed for all to see (see the release today of the OIG report), and if the economy continues to boom, many people will forgive his character flaws and rhetorical abominations, and Trumpism could very well take lasting root in the party of Lincoln, McKinley and Reagan.

The prospect of a realignment also depends upon how successful Stewart will be in what he promises to be a “vicious campaign” against Kaine, who, whatever one thinks of his politics and his off-putting performance during 2016’s vice presidential debate, is widely regarded as a likable person and the antithesis of vicious. It was one thing for Trump to run a nasty campaign against Hillary Clinton, who had more baggage than Kim Kardashian on a trip to Cannes, and quite another to run one against Mr. Clean. I further question whether Virginia voters, after two years of watching the politics of personal destruction in Washington, D.C., have an appetite for more of the same closer to home, so I am skeptical that Stewart’s pledged scorched-earth campaign will resonate. Indeed, I expect that it will fail spectacularly, in which case Stewart will be repudiated and the GOP could become safe once again for moderates and libertarians.

But my opinion may not count for much. I’m an educated suburbanite, and Stewart isn’t appealing to people like me. He’s hoping to mobilize the forgotten men and women of the white working class and middle class — those who feel alienated from elitist culture and the structures of power.

There may have been enough such voters to capture a GOP nomination, but are there enough to win a statewide U.S. Senate campaign? Stewart won only 45% of the Republican vote in a relatively low turnout primary. If he can unite the party, he has a remote chance of winning the election. If he can’t, he has zero chance. He drew disproportionate strength from the predominantly white localities west of the Blue Ridge Mountains, moderate support in Northern Virginia and the southern Piedmont industrial quadrangle (Roanoke, Lynchburg, Danville, Martinsville), but little anywhere else.

Here’s his problem. While nearly all Republicans and many independents recoil from the Democratic Party’s identity politics, they are divided about how to respond. Stewart answers the rhetoric of minority grievance and resentment with the rhetoric of white grievance and resentment. In a demographically diverse state like Virginia, that’s a losing proposition. Nick Freitas and E.W. Jackson, Stewart’s primary opponents, staked out more inclusive positions of opportunity for all. That’s a fundamental philosophical dividing line.

In the current political environment, I see three big buckets of voters — (1) those who hew to the Democratic tribe emphasizing grievances based on color, gender and sexual orientation, (2) those who hew to the Trump-Republican tribe emphasizing white working/middle-class grievances, and (3) those who eschew tribal identities altogether and see people as individuals with cross-cutting identities and priorities. The third group, I would suggest, overlaps significantly with a voting bloc I have referred to in the past as “natural libertarians” with a tolerant live-and-let-live philosophy — and that includes many Republicans who didn’t vote for Stewart.

The logical home of the natural libertarians, I would suggest, is within the Libertarian Party — if only the LP could broaden its appeal beyond its core base of intellectual purists by finding a large demographic constituency. In case you missed it, the LP has fielded a U.S. Senate candidate, Matt Waters. With a platform that includes ending the federal income tax, however, it’s hard to imagine voters taking him seriously.

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