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Virginia News Headlines: Monday Morning

By
lowkell
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6

Here are a few Virginia (and national) news headlines, political and otherwise, for Monday, August 19.

*Egypt police killed in Sinai ambush

*Britain Detains the Partner of a Reporter Tied to Leaks (WTF?!?)

*State police recorded license plates at political events (And again, WTF?!?)

*Attorneys for McDonnells to meet prosecutors (“Virginia prosecutors will decide whether to charge the governor and his wife in connection with a gifts scandal, according to people with knowledge of the probe.”)

*Republican Pundit Claims That Building Keystone XL Would Have Lifted The U.S. Out Of Recession Faster (Is Grover Norquist stupid? A pathological liar? Nuts? All of the above? That claim is far, far beyond laughable.)

*Virginia Elections 2013: GOP Attacks McAuliffe’s Business Background (Virginia Republicans are apparently now the anti-business and anti-entrepreneurship party.)

*Libertarian looks to shake up Virginia governor’s race (“Stephen J. Farnsworth, a professor of political science at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, said a third-party or independent candidate rarely finds conditions as fertile as they are now in Virginia.”)

*As crime falls, some in GOP rethink prison sentencing

*Fight over U.S. 460 is far from over (“The Virginia Department of Transportation, intent on building a 55-mile toll road that few Virginians want, has accused the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers of requesting excessive information about the project and unnecessarily costing taxpayers millions of dollars.”)

*Virginia immigration reform group targets Goodlatte town hall meeting (“A group supporting citizenship for undocumented residents plans to visit the Congressman’s Monday town hall meeting.”)

*Hampton Roads families watch, pray for the Egypt they left

*Virginia’s new battle of Bull Run (“A Richmond version of Spain’s famous bull run is planned for Saturday, angering animal activists.”)

*Forest shouldn’t be sacrificed for one industrial use

*D.C. area forecast: Chance of storms today, slowly heating back up this week

*Braves ring up Nats once more (Going nowhere fast…)

Photos: Mark Herring, Dorothy McAuliffe Address Large Crowd at the 2013 Pakistan Festival

By
lowkell
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1



To end the weekend, here are a few photos from the 2013 Pakistan Festival USA at Bull Run Park in Centreville. The first photo is of Virginia’s next Attorney General, Mark Herring, addressing the crowd. See the “flip” for a photo of Virginia’s next First Lady, Dorothy McAuliffe, doing the same. Also on the “flip” is a photo including House of Delegates candidate Hung Nguyen, Dorothy McAuliffe, Fairfax County Board Chair Sharon Bulova, Fairfax County Sheriff’s candidate Stacey Kincaid, Mark Herring, and Fairfax County School Board Chair Ilryong Moon.

Virginia Energy Resources misleads about Coles Hill Project Value on its Website

By
Progressive86
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0

While Virginia Uranium Inc.’s (VUI) Project Manager, Patrick Wales, has talked about VUI’s dedication to uranium mining safety, its parent company, Virginia Energy Resources Inc. can’t even differentiate between “indicated resources” and “mineral reserves” in technical disclosures released on its website. This is especially odd given the significance of its ‘mistakes’.

One source found the following:

“The Company [VUI] filed a technical report dated September 6, 2012 titled “NI 43-101 Preliminary Economic Assessment Update, Coles Hill Uranium Property, Pittsylvania County, Virginia, United States of America” by Lyntek Inc. and BRS Engineering “in support of a listing application dated August 31, 2012. The technical report did not comply with the requirements of NI 43-101 and Form 43-101F1 because it incorrectly included wording that “the preliminary economic assessment…indicates that the portion of the [indicated] mineral resource…is economic under current conditions” (Indicated resources are simply economic mineral occurrences that have been sampled from locations such as outcrops, trenches, pits and drillholes to a point where an estimate has been made, at a reasonable level of confidence, of their contained metal, grade, tonnage, shape, densities, physical characteristics.).”

The source goes on to state, “With respect to the Company’s disclosure of the Coles Hill PEA on its website and corporate presentations, the economic analysis appears unbalanced because the Company discloses upside uranium price sensitivity without providing equal downside sensitivity.”

The point is that if Virginia Energy Resources cannot be forthright with its investors and potential investors about the economic opportunities the Coles Hill uranium deposit holds, Virginians in particular should be weary of claims made by any company affiliated with Virginia Energy Resources, including VUI.

A company’s integrity is measured by the sum of its parts. If one part of a company, in this case a parent company, willfully lies to its investors, it creates the perception that the company in question has a business culture that doesn’t respect, much less care about, the truth. More often than not, if one part of a company demonstrates improper business practices, it can be found throughout its daughter, sister and/or parent companies as well.

What Virginia Energy Resources demonstrated by its informational “inaccuracies” is its willingness to put profits above facts, the truth, and not inconceivably, the safety of its business practices in order to turn a greater profit. So why should Virginians trust that its daughter company, VUI, wouldn’t do the same to protect and enhance its profits?

The reason why I oppose uranium mining in Virginia goes beyond the fact that an ‘incident’ could have irrevocable harm on Virginia’s environment and the people living in that environment; it also has to do with the motives of those who would be performing the mining. In the case of VUI, its motives and that of its parent company are clear: profits over people and profits over truth.  

Virginia News Headlines: Sunday Morning

By
lowkell
-
6

Here are a few Virginia (and national) news headlines, political and otherwise, for Sunday, August 18.

*Report: UN panel finds it’s 95 percent likely humans cause of climate change

*Balancing goals in Egypt proves tricky for U.S.

*Tennessee Republican tells girl her father has to be deported as tea party crowd cheers (Disgusting.)

*Is Maureen McDonnell “Madame Ten Percent?”

*Lobbyists, Public Officials and Their Cozy Relationships (“Giftgate has destroyed any illusion that Virginia politics are different from other states. In that sense, perhaps we owe Gov. McDonnell thanks for that bit of public service. But will anything change in Richmond? We’re not optimistic.” Me neither.)

*Northam’s bid for LG targets moderates (It’s pretty easy to do that when you’re running against someone who’s is certifiably insane.)

*Beware of donors bearing gifts (“That lack of specificity allows politicians to say they are not being bribed, while the undeniable power of the gift enables the wealthy to buy the loyalty of politicians. In this space between the bribe and the gift, corruption can run rampant.”)

*Schapiro: Enthusiasm gap scrambles Va. campaign (“The more Virginians hear about the ethical miscues of the candidates for governor, the less likely they are to vote. This is what Cuccinelli wants. A low turnout magnifies the power – and passion – of his slender, intense base.” Note that Republicans always seem to do better when FEWER people vote? Fascinating how that works.)

*Putting an end  to disparity (“Neither Ken Cuccinelli nor Terry McAuliffe has a clear plan for reducing inequities among public school systems in Virginia.” Actually, Cuccinelli’s “plan” is to defund the entire public school system.)

*Tesla can’t turn the power on in Virginia for its cars (“The DMV denied the company’s request to operate a dealership because of a law that prohibits auto manufacturers from being dealers. It also has experienced pushback from traditional dealers.” What a bunch of anti-competitive b.s.)

*Provost’s ‘hard decisions’ worry some UVa researchers

*Va. woman with Down syndrome becomes symbol of hope for disabled

*Downtown Tunnel closures are hitting Portsmouth businesses hard

*D.C. area forecast: Showers around today, and warmer temps on the way

*LaRoche’s home run in 15th inning helps Nationals top Braves (“A day after Harper gets hit twice, Strasburg is ejected after hitting a Braves star and three wild pitches.”)

Rightward-Facing Dog: Who is Watchdog.org?

By
kindler
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0

Cross-posted at Daily Kos

If you want to know the source of the conspiracy theories floating around Terry McAuliffe’s former company, GreenTech Auto, look no further than a little website named Watchdog.org and its so-called “Virginia bureau.”  It sounds like some sort of muckraking investigative site — until a closer look reveals that this is in fact a watchdog trained to only bark at Democrats and wag its tail at Republicans.

However, it’s not just another volunteer-based, opinionated blog like, say, Blue Virginia.  Watchdog is funded by big corporate, conservative interests — including the Koch brothers — to essentially manage the opposition research for campaigns like Ken Cuccinelli’s so that the campaigns can focus their time and money on other things.  

They’re certainly not legitimate journalists, but they’ve established their “bureaus” in state capitals across the country, and some state capital correspondents’ associations grant them press credentials.  Unfortunately that includes our very own Virginia Capital Correspondents Association, of which Watchdog’s Kenric Ward — unlike any other blogger or lobbyist — is allowed to be a member.

Thanks to some investigative journalism done about them, here’s what we do know about the shadowy Watchdog.org:

It gets big bucks from right wing donors:  Watchdog is run by the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, which itself was launched by the conservative Sam Adams Alliance.  These groups are so tied in to all the other major Tea Party power brokers and organizations that it’s hard to go through all those links without pulling out a progressive version of Glenn Beck’s chalkboard.  

According to Source Watch, 95% of the Franklin Center’s funding in 2011 came from Donors Trust, a group that Mother Jones has called “the dark-money ATM of the conservative movement” for its record of steering half a billion dollars anonymously from wealthy conservative donors to the poster children of the Tea Party, including Americans for Prosperity, the execrable ALEC, and climate denial groups like Heartland Institute.

The Franklin Center’s parent, Sam Adams Alliance, in turn gets money from another parent organization, the State Policy Network, which (in turn!) gets cash from such right wing notables as the Claude R. Lambe Foundation and, of course, the Koch brothers.  (Do money-laundering operations have so many layers of middlemen?)

Its bias is unquestionable:  The Franklin Center’s leanings are obvious, as it has for example (per a story in Media Matters) funded “a conservative blogger conference…that featured discredited right-wing voices Dana Loesch and James O’Keefe” and was “a co-sponsor of the 2012 Conservative Political Action Conference. According to the CPAC site, that means Franklin Center contributed at least $5,000 to the right-wing event.”

And per TruthOut, “At the 2011 American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) annual conference in New Orleans, The Franklin Center was listed as a ‘Vice-Chairman’ level sponsor of the ALEC conference. In 2010, this equated to a gift of at least $25,000.”

Yet Franklin Center officials profess that their Watchdog practices objective journalism.  Watchdog claims to be

“a collection of independent journalists covering state-specific and local government activity…doing what legacy journalism outlets prove unable to do: share information, dive deep into investigations, and provide the fourth estate that has begun to fade in recent decades.”

 

Sadly, the only estates this group is protecting are the ones with the high fences and guard dogs owned by the richest 1%.  

On Watchdog’s Virginia website, you can search on the names of our gubernatorial candidates, and quickly find that there is no balance in their coverage — it’s universally negative against McAuliffe (in 54 articles so far, and counting) while keeping hands off of Cuccinelli.  (There is some criticism of Governor McDonnell — for not being conservative enough.)

In fact, Watchdog is the original source of most of the stories you’ve seen about GreenTech — and the investigations into the company.  And they brag about it: “Watchdog.org series leads to EB-5 investigation.”  

Here’s a great window into how today’s conservative establishment manipulates the media and public opinion — funnel lots of money into alleged “news” organizations, have them stir up lots of smoke over alleged “scandals”, followed by powerful politicians calling for investigations (in this case, Sen. Chuck Grassley), milk those investigations for all they’re worth as your Tea Party organizations — funded by the same donors — whip up hatred against your opponents, all the while diverting attention from the real issues and the failings of your own candidates.  Stir and repeat.

This is a pattern Watchdog has manifested in state capitals nationwide.  While there are numerous examples from Iowa to West Virginia, perhaps the most noteworthy is the work of Watchdog affiliate Wisconsin Reporter, which has worked diligently to support the right-wing agenda of Gov. Scott Walker in that state.  As one who applied to work for that organization reported, the application process uses a questionnaire inquiring into the applicant’s beliefs on a range of political issues like “How do free markets help the poor?” and “Do higher taxes lead to balanced budgets?”  

Journalism?  Um, no.  

It slants its coverage to fit its donors:  Just as interesting is how the organization gears its coverage to meet the specific lobbying needs of its corporate donors.  Hence you see the organization bragging to its donors in a fundraising email, “When you give to the Franklin Center, you have an immediate impact on the power of our reporting.”

Media Matters recounts how Watchdog affiliate IdahoReporter.com posted numerous stories against a seemingly uncontroversial bill to ban minors from commercial tanning beds, ultimately leading to the bill’s defeat.  

Wonder which industry paid them for that story?  It was enough to lead the Capitol Correspondents Association of Idaho to revoke Watchdog’s credentials and for the association’s president to call the group “basically a lobbying organization linked to a news arm.”

Questions worth asking:

While states like Idaho and Ohio have revoked their Watchdog.org affiliate’s credentials, in Virginia, you can see for yourself that they are granted the same status as legitimate press.  Yet the Virginia Capital Correspondents Association website states that its credentialed members:

“must (i) work independently of any government, industry, or institution and (ii) not engage, directly or indirectly, in any lobbying, political activity or other activity intended to influence elections or any matter before the General Assembly or before any independent agency, or any department or other instrumentality of the Executive Branch.”

So Watchdog’s crusade against McAuliffe’s campaign doesn’t count?  And their work for the obviously right wing Franklin Center counts as “working independently”?

If you think their credentials as state correspondents should be revoked, you can contact VCCA at officers@vapress.org, or even better, contact the members of the VCCA, whose names you’ll recognize as the most active (real) journalists covering Virginia politics.  You may want to ask them why they’re imperiling their own reputations by allowing a phony “news organization” to be granted the same status as theirs.  

Also check your local press outlets to see if they’re using material from Watchdog and passing it off as “news”.  The Media Matters story quotes Cort Kirkwood, managing editor of the Daily News-Record in Harrisonburg, Virginia as admitting that he does, with the excuse that he can’t afford his own capital correspondents.  

And I would strongly encourage reporters and pundits who have jumped on the GreenTech story to do their own reporting and stories on what Watchdog is all about.  One question bugging me is whether Watchdog is just a sneaky way for donors to funnel their money indirectly to support a campaign like Cuccinelli’s without anyone knowing.  With all the focus right now in Virginia on gifts from corporate buddies, this may be a convenient time for such subterfuge.  

It’s more important than ever for media consumers to be aware of the sources of what they’re reading, as right wing groups like Watchdog shamelessly manipulate the system to let corporate donors and their wholly-owned politicians work their will.  We need more real watchdogs — and fewer corporate lapdogs.  

Is THIS what Virginia is headed for?

By
ir003436
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1

There’s a diary on DailyKos that everyone needs to read.  The diary describes a meeting of the county election commission in Wautaga County, NC — home of Boone, NC, and Appalachian State University.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

It seems the local Republican-dominated election commission met to plan how to implement the legislation passed by the Republican-dominated NC legislature that is aimed at suppressing voting by college students and other typical Democratic constituencies.

The diary includes an hour-long video of a meeting that quickly exploded in shouting matches, led by local Democrats who aren’t taking this stuff lying down.

Here, for example, is a list of what the Tea Party members of the county election commission wanted to accomplish:

There’s a lot of local backstory associated with this story, but the short and skinny is that these two meathead Republican Board members came to the meeting with a prepared-but clearly-not-by-them Tea Party agenda to:

1. Eliminate the Appalachian State University (ASU) early one-stop voting site.

2. Force all early voting into one location hard to access by students, faculty, and staff at ASU.

3. Outlaw any verbal public comment at Board meetings and require that written comments be screened to ensure they were “pertinent” and communicated without cussing or libel.

4. Require that the 27-year Elections Board Director, a woman totally on the straight up and beloved by the entire county, not be allowed to meet with anyone in her office without supervision.

5. Mandate that anyone calling into the local BOE office have their names recorded.

6. Move the “New River” precinct (a heavily populated precinct in and around the town of Boone) out into the very corner of the precinct into a virtually unknown location and as far away from municipal voters as possible.

7. Combine three Boone precincts into one Super Precinct consisting of 9,300 voters and 35 parking spaces. Oh. And away as far as possible from ASU.

Please don’t tell me it can’t happen here.   That’s what folks in NC thought a couple of years ago.

McDonnell Scandal: When is a Husband Responsible for a Wife’s Actions?

By
Goldmanusa
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7

by Paul Goldman

The following column should be read with the new Dire Straits song, “Money for Nothing and Your First Lady for Free” in the background.

We learn today what I speculated about weeks ago, what the federal prosecutors and Governor McDonnell’s legal team have known for sure from jump street: that First Lady Maureen McDonnell had been lured – willingly – by Star Scientific “business” hustler Jonnie Williams into a de facto financial affair, where Ms. McDonnell was a de facto paid agent to promote his companies last dietary product.

We learned in today’s newspapers the $50K loan from Williams to the First Lady was made largely if not solely to enable her to buy Star stock. That Mrs. McD would want to own this stock made perfect sense, since it was being touted by some as a potential gold mine, now $5 a share, for a company that might be worth 1000% that or way more in the near future.

So Williams agreed to loan her the money to buy the stock not long before she had agreed to speak at one of his conferences on the product. Moreover, as I written before, I believe Williams made her promises of stock options and other stock related stuff when she was no longer First Lady and could be openly a major spokesperson and sales person for the company.

This is why I have labeled her W—–T—-, selling out the Governor’s Mansion and the role of First Lady for some quick cash and promises of riches from a hustler like Jonnie Williams.

 

How much did the Governor know and when did he know? That’s the old Watergate Scandal question and it remains the same for all scandals, Giftgate the latest. Governor McDonnell claims that he knew nothing of his wife’s purchases of Star stock. He did list the $50K loan on his disclosure forms. But his disclosure forms never mention his wife owning Star Scientific stock.

In effect, our Governor is using the German defense of Sgt. Schultz from Hogan’s Heroes: “I know nothing. Nothing!” That was one funny show, and gutsy too. That America could eventually laugh and forgive the Germans is amazing, shows what a great country we can be. Look at Egypt: 5,000 years and those folks will go another 5,000. Why do we give them a dime? I suppose it gets down to the Suez Canal. But that is more a British and European problem than ours.

Back to the Governor married to W—–T—–. Should we feel sorry for old Bob, should we believe that his wife was simply out of control and doing this stuff without his knowledge, even though anyone with any sense knew it could ruin her husband?

As 200-proof politics has said all along, we have to give McDonnell the benefit of the doubt: but this means “reasonable doubt,” not ANY doubt. Is it reasonable that is wife bought and sold Star Scientific stock, and then gave it to the kids, all timed it would appear to satisfy a loophole in the disclosure laws, without telling her husband the Governor about it?

According to the First Lady’s new lawyer (another $1,000-an-hour top rated criminal lawyer from DC), this is true. By the way: How are the broke McDonnells paying for yet another hugely expense legal eagle?  According to the McDonnell legal/PR team, he knew nothing, he was indeed Sgt. Schultz all the way on this stock stuff.

Now we see what McDonnell’s crack PR guy cracked up in public by attacking Jonnie Williams for cooperating with the federal investigation. We now see one of things Williams knows, namely how the whole stock thing played out, what he promised to the First Lady, et. al. Is it reasonable for the Governor to say that he knew of none of it, none at all? Naturally it depends on the whole set of facts, what else the feds have in this area of the scandal. We suspect more than is in the newspapers today.

But let’s bottom line it: Suppose the Governor didn’t have knowledge of the stock stuff in terms of it creating any legal responsibility under all the statues at issue. HOW MUCH THEN, is it fair to impute, to glue, to the Governor for purposes of a federal grand jury investigation and possible indictment?

Or put another way: Under Democratic theory, Ms. McDonnell is really Maureen McDonnell, an independent person, free to do whatever she pleases, or as the famous line goes: “If you can’t sleep with the one you want, then sleep with the one you’re with.” Financially speaking, of course, in this case.

In the Mississippi Trading Scandal, the men had to take full responsibility for all actions done in their name, or reasonably related. There was no “my wife did it, or my wife made me do it” defense.  Things are different today, as they should be.

SO: Can the Governor win with a Sgt. Schultz defense? We need more facts. Given all the logical inferences from what we know, he has some convincing to do on that score. He knew nothing at all?  But it is possible given the timeline in the paper. However, the timeline seems almost too coincidental, as if timed so that he could deny it.

However, the W—-T—- nature of the First Lady might save him: I can see where she didn’t tell him, that she wanted all the stock gains for herself.  But surely the Governor must have asked his wife before signing the disclosure statement, indeed upon hearing about the $50K loan: “Maureen, what the heck did Jonnie give you $50K for, what did you do to earn that kind of money?”

Surely most men would ask their significant other this question, not merely accept that someone had given your wife $50K just to give it to her. What man is going to not ask his wife about it? So put me down as from Missouri, a little farther up the Big Muddy. I will give Big McD the benefit of the doubt right now: but he needs to tell me more quick.  

Cuccinelli gets ruffled in Roanoke over question related to campaign donations from Big Energy

By
Progressive86
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3

In today’s spend-heavy era of American politics, it’s admittedly difficult for political candidates to fund their campaigns and their hopes for elected office without reaching far and wide for political handouts. Perhaps now more than ever the question becomes, is it appropriate for a political candidate to take money from groups or individuals that have diametrically opposed interests to at least a segment of the potential or actual constituency of the said candidate?

For Virginia’s attorney general, and Republican Party candidate for Virginia governor, Ken Cuccinelli, the answer has unequivocally been, “Yes, I’ll take campaign donations just about anyone who offers it.” And so the plot thickens.

When asked by an attendee of Cuccinelli’s campaign stop at the Hotel Roanoke on Friday whether or not he felt it was acceptable to take campaign donations from Consol, Virginia’s attorney general responded, “Well I need a lot more donations. My opponent is outspending me like 2:1.” In other words, Cuccinelli’s argument is that he’s in this ‘contest’ to win, not to necessarily worry about the ethical implications of his behaviors.

Never one to shy away from pointing the finger or casting blame, Cuccinelli went on to lament the intense focus voters have had over Cuccinelli’s ruling in the mineral rights royalties case that sent a bill passed without opposition in the General Assembly into the dustbin of legislative history, a bill that would have sped up mineral royalty payments to Virginia landowners.

According to The Roanoke Times, “Cuccinelli’s office later intervened to support energy companies in court when landowners, frustrated by the failure of the bill to free up royalties, started suing for their royalties.” Indeed, it’s a complete mystery as to why this issue has received so much attention!

What Cuccinelli essentially did was repudiate the will of the people (i.e., the Virginia General Assembly) to the clear advantage of energy companies seeking to extract more energy from Virginia’s landowners without royalty payments. And this, too, from a candidate who has attempted to brand himself as a ‘man of the people’.

The problem with Cuccinelli is not so much that he is an extremist (although this is certainly an issue). The problem with Cuccinelli is that he can’t be trusted to properly represent the interests of Virginians. As Cuccinelli hinted at in the quote above, the end is the most important outcome of his campaign, not the means. But it is the means which define a political candidate while they are in office, whether they will be beholden to parochial and adverse special interests, or whether they will be true representatives of the people who elected them into office.

The Cuccinelli’s of the political world will never understand this: what you do to get into office is just as important as what you do while in office. This, among many reasons, is why Cuccinelli doesn’t deserve to be Virginia’s next governor.  

Virginia News Headlines: Saturday Morning

By
lowkell
-
7

Here are a few Virginia (and national) news headlines, political and otherwise, for Saturday, August 17. Also see President Obama’s weekly address, on benefits and protections coming with implementation of the Affordable Care Act, and on Republicans’ irresponsible attempts to sabotage them (and to harm Americans in the process).

*Divided Egypt plunges further into civil conflict (Terrible situation, but it’s hard to think of what the United States could do about it exactly. Same thing with Syria, sadly…)

*GOP Congressman Gets Fact Checked By His Own Constituents On Obamacare: ‘Stop Lying!’ (We need a LOT more of this!)

*RNC votes to refuse NBC, CNN debates unless they kill Clinton-themed films (“Bless them. As Kos says, there’s no reason for the Republican crazy machine to have to tone it down and step out of the clown shoes to have a debate hosted by anyone other than fellow crackpots. Raise the big top, boys, now we’re gonna put on a show.”)

*Virginia’s first lady bought stock in Star Scientific (“Maureen McDonnell bought shares as she and her husband were promoting the dietary supplement firm”)

*Va. first lady used loan to buy Star Scientific stock (“Confirmation of the transactions adds another layer to the connections between Jonnie Williams Sr., the Star Scientific executive who has lavished gifts on Gov. Bob McDonnell and his family. Those gifts are now part of state and federal investigations.”)

*Richmond Times Dispatch Unfairly Compares Birth Control Mandate And Virginia Sodomy Law (It’s crap like this why I call it the “Republican Times Disgrace”)

*Setting the record straight on GreenTech (Bottom line: there’s no “there there” with this one. Yawn.)

*Cuccinelli Faces Tough Questions at Town Hall in Roanoke

*McDonnell: Rainy day fund on track to hit $1 billion

*Va. delegate sues transportation authority for not spending properly (“The law says projects cutting the most traffic get funded first, and Bob Marshall says it isn’t happening.”)

*McAuliffe and Cuccinelli’s battle of innuendo (“The campaign of Republican contender Kenneth Cuccinelli is making  a lot of hay over some rather vague accusations’ involving McAuliffe, and that seems to be as much as they have on Terry.” As usual, Peter Galuszka is able to figure out what almost nobody else in the world of Virginia political “journalism” is able to do, that there’s a massive false equivalence going on here between Cuccinelli’s ethical violations and McAuliffe’s less-successful-than-hoped-for business startup. Is this really that hard to understand?!?)

*Goodlatte to appear on ‘Face the Nation’ (The fact is, there are enough votes RIGHT NOW to pass the Senate, bipartisan immigration reform bill in the House, but Republican “leadership” won’t bring it to the floor. #FAIL)

*Cuccinelli, McAuliffe: credits should support rehab of old schools (“There’s one issue Ken Cuccinelli and Terry McAuliffe can agree on.” The only thing I don’t get here is if everyone agrees on this, then why hasn’t it happened yet exactly?)

*A cool weekend, with rain odds up tonight into Sunday

*Late home run sinks Nats again

With “Reporting” Like This, No Wonder Patch is Having “Massive Layoffs”

By
lowkell
-
0

The juxtaposition of this story (Patch going down the tubes, basically) and this fiasco at the Herndon Patch today was too much to pass up for a quick hit here at Blue Virginia. What happened at the Herndon Patch, you ask?

1. They posted a story on Terry McAuliffe’s remarks to the Dulles Regional Chamber of Commerce, supposedly saying “he supports the bi-county parkway and a bridge across the Potomac” just days after saying he needed more information and analysis of the Bi-County parkway before making a decision. Gotcha, right?  Well…

2. No. Shortly after posting the first edition of this story, the Herndon Patch added this “Editor’s Note.”

Patch has received many questions about Terry McAuliffe’s statement to the Chamber regarding his position on the bi-county parkway. We asked McAuliffe’s camp to clarify his statement, and they responded that he supports the repair or replacement of the bridge across the Potomac before it becomes unusable, but takes no position on the bi-county parkway at this time.

In other words, McAuliffe did NOT change his position on the parkway, as originally reported by the Herndon Patch. So much for that story…whatever, it’s just “journalism” after all!

3. In an attempt to explain what happened, the Herndon Patch editor wrote in the comments section that “[t]he sentence that said he supported the parkway was provided to us by the chamber.” In other words, they didn’t have a reporter at the event, or apparently any audio or video, to confirm that Terry McAuliffe had said what the paper claimed he said. They just went with what someone who doesn’t even work for their paper said he said. Ugh.

4. A comment by “Lynn” following the editor’s shift-the-blame exercise wasn’t buying it. To the contrary, it cited “the poor journalism in this case,” noting that “a reporter should always follow-up on the facts to ensure accuracy before publishing,” and that this is “[e]specially [important] for a topic as sensitive as this.” Ya think? 😉

5. Also note that the Herndon Patch spells “Democratic” as “Democrstic” in the caption to its photo. And for whatever odd reason, it consistently uses lower case for the proper name, “Bi-County Parkway.” Yes, in addition to Journalism 101, the Herndon Patch also fails the SOL English section.

Bottom line: with “reporting” like this, it’s no wonder the Patch is circling the drain as we speak…

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