Tag Archives: Jock Yellott

The Budget Do-Over: A Game of Chicken?

Posted on April 22, 2024 by | 17 comments

by Jock Yellott 

Speaking off-the-cuff at a Charlottesville/Albemarle Bar Association lunch on April 18, 2024, Senator Creigh Deeds offered some pointed remarks about Governor Youngkin.

The Governor and the General Assembly had just the day before agreed to scrap the budget and the Governor’s proposed amendments and start over from scratch in May, averting a crisis. 

Youngkin’s more than 200 proposed budget amendments are evidence of a CEO mentality, Deeds observed. Compared to other governors the Senator has worked with, this one seems disengaged from the political process.  

Senator Deeds told his lawyer colleagues he anticipates that in May the General Assembly will vote essentially the same budget.  

Consider the implications of that.

To me as an outsider it had looked like the politicos starting over in a spirit of cooperation, this time with more realistic expectations. I was not alone in this: Steve Haner hoped they’ll “finally sit down like adults and negotiate the budget.”

Maybe we were naïve. Continue reading →

17 Comments

Posted in Budgets, General Assembly, Politics

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Youngkin Kicks the Can Down the Road on Affirmative Action

Posted on April 9, 2024 by | 10 comments

by Jock Yellott

By partisan votes, the Democrat controlled General Assembly presented Republican Governor Youngkin with HB 1404, mandating affirmative action in Virginia government contracts.  

Bacon’s Rebellion published a piece that listed the bill as a veto candidate. One of those that would “have the greatest negative economic impact on the Commonwealth.”

But instead of a veto, at the 11th hour on Monday April 8, 2024 Governor Youngkin proposed amending it.

The amendments would postpone its effective date for a year — if reenacted by the General Assembly. Meantime, let’s have more “input.” Continue reading →

10 Comments

Posted in Business and Economy, Economic development, General Assembly

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Email Your Delegate: Kill the Unconstitutional Affirmative Action Bill

Posted on January 26, 2024 by | 38 comments


by Jock Yellott

As a follow-up to “US Constitution Calling Jason Miyares,” published here January 15, 2024: the Virginia Legislature now is considering a bill, HR 1404, mandating “Disadvantaged Business Enterprise” affirmative action in all state government contracting.  It’s before the House Committee on Rules.

H.R. 1404 presumes people are “disadvantaged” based on their origins; their group identity.  Which the US Supreme Court declared unconstitutional 30 years ago in the Adarand Constructors case.  And the Supreme Court confirmed its unconstitutionality last June in Students for Fair Admissions. The bill mirrors the federal Small Business Administration list of groups presumed disadvantaged, always and everywhere, that a federal district court declared unconstitutional last July (the Biden administration’s SBA is now trying to wiggle out from under that ruling).

You can do something: write a delegate on the House Rules Committee.  Click on the names below:

Scott, D.L(Chair),Watts, Ward, Sickles, Herring, Carr, Torian, Simon, Hayes, Sullivan, Tran,  Kilgore, Austin, Webert, O’Quinn, Batten

They have a lot to read; no need to write an essay. Just say the affirmative action in H.R. 1404 is unconstitutional on its face.  Kill it in committee. Continue reading →

38 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, General Assembly

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U.S. Constitution Calling Jason Miyares . . .

Posted on January 15, 2024 by | 79 comments

by Jock Yellott

Affirmative action is unconstitutional, said the U .S. Supreme Court last June.

But we’ll keep doing it until somebody tells us not to, says Virginia’s Department of Transportation. In some quarters, it seems we’re seeing Massive Resistance to the Supreme Court’s ruling.

An especially absurd, and ongoing, affirmative action boondoggle called the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program magnifies the cost of Virginia roadbuilding … and causes minority lay-offs. Yes: it’s hurting the minorities it is supposed to help.

Recently, a Charlottesville small business won a city contract to build a bike path. But the Virginia Department of Transportation told the City: deny them the contract. Not enough “good faith effort” to go find minority subcontractors, they opined.

Losing the contract means laying off the small business’s employees. Nearly half of whom are minorities. Continue reading →

79 Comments

Posted in Business and Economy, Civil Rights

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Poking the Woke, and Human Waste in Charlottesville

Posted on October 4, 2023 by | 86 comments

California comes to Charlottesville: urine, feces, hypodermic needles, trash, and all.

“Affordable housing.”

by Jock Yellott

“What happened to the First Amendment in this country . . . ?” demanded somebody calling himself ‘Rudy Hess.’ Charlottesville Mayor Lloyd Snook cut the audio. This was late in the City Council meeting, about 10 p.m. during public comments mostly taken up by remarks on Charlottesville’s new homeless tent city.

Several previous callers had exhausted Snook’s patience and good humor. They started by pretending to be agreeably Woke. “Speaking as a transgender person,” said one before launching into obscenities, which had to be cut off. Another, ‘Sadie Enwird’ (sound it out after you finish the paragraph) claimed to be a Social Worker helping the homeless. Two minutes later she broke into a toxic rant: “The best solution is to round them all up and send them back to Africa, all these fucking niggers . . . ” Such hate speech, the City Attorney opined, justified cutting her off, too.

Then came ‘Rudy Hess.’ The original Deputy Führer Rudolph Hess sentenced at Nuremburg, committed suicide in prison at age 93. Why would a dead Nazi war criminal poseur phone in to Charlottesville’s City Council? Or the others who were cut off?

Calling it Poking the Woke.

City Council and the Woke champions of the “unhoused” who dominate public comments in the last couple of meetings are easy targets. The activists hurl invective and obscenities of their own, as well as indulging in make-believe. They fomented a fake grievance to loosen the City’s purse strings and get funding for a homeless shelter. From the video of the City Council meeting September 18, 2023, starting at 2:53:19:

There was a incident at the park, where one of the officers kicked the young man that was setting here …. [The officer] was trying to wake him up. But instead of gently touching him … he decided to kick him. And … prior to that … your officers went over to Lee Park and woke everybody up, and made ’em leave with the exception of the white people that were in the park.

He kicked that boy like he was kicking a football down the field to the other team,” another alleged witness told our local paper, the Daily Progress. “He put his soul into that kick.

Continue reading →

86 Comments

Posted in Homelessness, Housing

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Democracy Dies in Drabness

Posted on July 16, 2022 by | 25 comments

City of Charlottesville office building… no, my bad, that’s an East German Stasi office building.

by Jock Yellott

Charlottesville’s City Hall used to be open to its citizens. We could go talk to people. Ask questions. Learn.

No longer. Front door locked. A guard in an air conditioned box. A citizen has to justify going inside. Where? Seeing whom? Why?

The guard calls upstairs to where I’m supposed to go, but no answer. She calls somebody else to let me in the door. I climb the stairs to the second floor and find… a newly installed second locked door. With camera. And a buzzer system.

I need to deliver something to the City Attorney. Buzz. Nobody answers.

The City Council Clerk? Buzz. Nobody answers. No surprise there, the clerk’s office door is usually shut with lights off. Last time the job was open was 2018, salary advertised at $70,532.80 to $137,538.96. My tax dollars at work. Or, not. No way to know who’s actually working if we can’t go in City Hall. Continue reading →

25 Comments

Posted in Open Government, Public safety & health

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The Battle Over History Never Ceases

Posted on March 14, 2022 by | 11 comments

Image credit: Pinterest

by Jock Yellott 

Visit the Virginia Regulatory Town Hall, and you will find that the Department of Historic Resources is fast-tracking regulations governing the contextualization of “monuments or memorials for Certain War Veterans.”

I object to this fast-tracking. The new regulations will expedite the promulgation of Woke propaganda to litter the Virginia landscape.

The fast-tracked regulations could take effect within months. But if ten people object, the regulations have to go through a full two-year vetting. Which would allow time to add a dose of common sense.

One hopes at least nine more people will add their objections to mine. The 30-day public comment forum commences today, March 14, 2022. That’s the only opportunity to object. So, log in and say something now. Continue reading →

11 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Regulation, Virginia history

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