From the Coalition for Smarter Growth:

After years of planning, the Arlington County Board is set to take the final vote tomorrow to move forward with the Columbia Pike Streetcar. The Coalition for Smarter Growth supports the streetcar plan as the right choice for Columbia Pike (here's a reminder on why), and we hope you do, too. This vote will allow the design work that's necessary for the project to begin.

Tell the Arlington Board we support the Columbia Pike Streetcar Plan >>

Feel like we've been here before? While the Board approved the streetcar in 2006 and 2012, opponents asked that the Board reconsider the plan when earlier this year, the Federal Transit Administration declined federal Small Starts program funding for the project, instead recommending that the project should be considered in the larger New Starts program.

The third time's the charm – tell the Arlington Board to vote yes one more time. >>

Want to learn more about the issue? We've got you covered! Here's what the Sierra Cluband Arlington Streetcar Now have to say. There's lots of official information at Arlington County's streetcar website, and these great articles about the streetcar vs. BRT, streetcar capacity, and what it means for affordable housing.

Thank you for standing with us for smart growth in Arlington!

Aimee
—
Aimee Custis
Coalition for Smarter Growth

action@smartergrowth.net 

That the House Republican farm bill would quite literally starve low-income families while shoveling billions in subsidies to agribusiness corporations? BOOOO-RING.

But hey, did you hear who’s going to a pancake breakfast in Iowa this weekend? The Iowa caucus is only 30 months away! Never mind that it’s failed to predict the Republican nominee two cycles in a row. HORSE RACE! It’s on!

Your national political news is almost always filtered through the lens of someone who’s white, middle to upper income, lives in the DC or New York City suburbs, drives more than relying on walking/biking/transit, never worries about where their next meal will come from, cares much more about political spin than policy impact, and thinks everyone sees the world the exact same way

As Ezra Klein often says, “The first rule of being a political junkie is to always remember that you are a very weird person, and most people are not like you.” Seems like very few political journalists ever get that introspective.

Cross-posted from The Green Miles

From NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia. Also note, I’ve been talking to leaders in Fairfax City and hope to have some more commentary on all this later today or tomorrow…

NOVA WOMEN’S HEALTHCARE CLOSES DOORS

Largest abortion provider in Commonwealth faced multiple barriers to providing safe, legal reproductive health care

Tarina Keene, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia, released the following statement on the recently-announced closure of NOVA Women’s Healthcare, the largest abortion provider in the Commonwealth:

“I was deeply saddened to learn that NOVA Women’s Healthcare in Fairfax City has been forced to close its doors. NOVA Women’s Healthcare has provided safe, exemplary medical care in Northern Virginia for over 10 years, and was one of the largest women’s health centers in the Commonwealth. Its closure affects thousands of Virginia women and families, and leaves its many patients without their trusted healthcare provider.”

This announcement comes less than a month after new statewide regulations on abortion providers went into effect in Virginia, and six days after the Fairfax City Council mandated women’s health centers undergo an extensive and subjective zoning application process – despite allowing other doctors’ and dentists offices to remain zoned by-right. The City Council took up this measure after NOVA Women’s Healthcare submitted an application to move to Main St. in May. The clinic’s request was eventually denied on the grounds that its perspective building had one parking space below the minimum required.

“The fact that a single parking space helped dictate the ability of this clinic to continue providing safe and legal care is a testament to the many intricate and intersecting barriers that Virginia’s women’s health centers face every single day,” Keene continued. “New and politically-motivated regulations on abortion providers, which went into effect last month, only added to this burden. And had NOVA been able to comply with the cost and hurdles of TRAP, Fairfax City’s new zoning ordinance would have served as yet another obstacle to this center’s ability to continue serving its patients.

It just goes to show that while these regulations and barriers may seem manageable when viewed separately, they are part of a larger anti-choice strategy to shutter clinics and restrict women’s healthcare. We are devastated by today’s news.”  

“Virginia’s women’s health centers provide comprehensive reproductive care to thousands of women across the Commonwealth,” said Anna Scholl, executive director of ProgressVA. “The closure of NOVA Women’s Healthcare is devastating not only to their patients, but also to Virginians who are devoted to ensuring women have access to affordable care, medically accurate information, and safe and legal abortion care. NOVA’s closure underlines how politicians across Virginia, at the state and local level, have shut down access to health care services. We remain devoted to ensuring every Virginian has access to safe and affordable health care services.”

NOVA Women’s Healthcare is the second abortion provider to close in Virginia since TRAP regulations went into effect in April. A majority of the Commonwealth’s remaining 18 abortion providers could close as early as 2014.  

( – promoted by lowkell)

I’ve said that today’s American crisis is – in some ways – a replay of the run-up to the Civil War. The spirit on the political right wreaking havoc on the nation these days is a re-emergence – or perhaps, a re-incarnation- of the spirit that drove the South to make war over slavery, pressing the argument until the nation had broken in two and descended into a nightmarish Civil War.

Though the circumstances and the particulars have changed, there’s a pattern — a spirit – that has moved through time.

Abraham Lincoln’s Address at Sanitary Fair, given in Baltimore, April 18, 1864, helps show a parallel. Here’s an excerpt:

“We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name-liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names-liberty and tyranny.

“The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails today among us human creatures, even in the North, and all professing to love liberty. Hence we behold the process by which thousands are daily passing from under the yoke of bondage, hailed by some as the advance of liberty, and bewailed by others as the destruction of all liberty. Recently, as it seems, the people of Maryland have been doing something to define liberty [abolishing slavery in the state]; and thanks to them that, in what they have done, the wolf’s dictionary, has been repudiated.”

Southern slaveholders (the wolves in Lincoln’s fable) insisted that liberty required that those in a dominant position (over slaves), be allowed to maintain their domination, and to advance their own interests at the expense of the interests of those whom they had subdued.

Liberty, as it is pushed by Republicans now, has the same kind of meaning. Republicans fight for the right of people of wealth and power to do whatever they want.

The wolf’s kind of liberty today includes giant corporations being free from regulation that is for the public good.

The rights of the Whole in some situations should trump the freedom of action of the Part. But today’s Republicans argue for a kind of liberty that denies the legitimacy of society, acting collectively through the democratic state, to impose specific limits on very powerful interests.

Even as Republicans claim liberty from law, they support a kind of liberty that enables these special interests to buy the power to make the laws. In the name of “liberty,” the Republicans are helping their corporate partners gain control of the political system.

Building upon previous perverse rulings that declare money to be a form of speech, the Republican Supreme Court gave us the Citizens United decision, declaring corporations to be persons with the right to liberty, and thereby expanding the ability of moneyed interests to buy our government at the very time that inequalities of wealth are greater than they’ve been in living memory.

This is the liberty of the wolf in Lincoln’s fable.  The wolves of our time express the same dishonest and unjust spirit.

************************

Andy Schmookler, recently the Democratic nominee for Congress from Virginia’s 6th District, is an award-winning author, political commentator, radio talk-show host, and teacher.  His books include The Parable of the Tribes:  The Problem of Power in Social Evolution.   His website is at www.NoneSoBlind.org.

Here are a few Virginia (and national) news headlines, political and otherwise, for Monday, July 15. Also, check out the video by Annabel Park and Eric Byler, shot 30 minute after the Trayvon Martin verdict, talking to Joshua Vincent, former field director of the North Carolina NAACP and leader in the Moral Monday movement.

*Jury instructions were central to George Zimmerman’s acquittal (“The judge told jurors that Zimmerman was allowed to use deadly force not only if he actually faced death or bodily harm, but also if he merely thought he did.”)

*Rallies, marches follow Zimmerman verdict (Note, they were overwhelmingly peaceful, not at all the “race riots” right wingnuts warned would happen. Right wing, wrong again!)

*National Sheriff’s Association Releases Statement on Florida Neighborhood Watch Tragedy (“NSA has no information indicating the community has ever even registered with the program.”)

*Six Million Trayvons: How The George Zimmerman Mindset Has Rigged The Justice System Against Young Black Men

*Reality weighs in  on pension fund (“Lawmakers ignored their own actuaries and underfunded the retirement system for years.  It’s time to shape up.” There goes Bob McDonnell’s mythical “budget surplus!”)

*Gifts to Virginia’s Governor McDonnell Cloud the Race to Succeed Him (The question for the governor’s race is simple: what did Attorney General Cuccinelli know, when did he know it, and what if anything did he do about it?!? Also, what about Cuccinelli’s ties to the same slimeball, Jonnie Williams, that McDonnell’s BFF with?)

*Road to White House May Start With Virginia Contest (Weird title that doesn’t match the article; this is pretty much about Terry McAuliffe’s campaign manager, Robby Mook.)

*Timeline of gifts from Star CEO to the McDonnells

*Details on nonviolent felons’ rights plan due today (I can’t help but think that this could apply to corrupt, possibly future felon, Bob McDonnell someday…)

*Cuccinelli Outlines 7 Point Plan for Veterans (He claims he’d provide more funding for veterans, but he also plans to slash state revenues by giving massive tax breaks to the wealthiest Virginians. Sorry, but any of us who are math literate know that doesn’t add up. Cuccinelli=Liar.)

*Ken Cuccinelli to hold meetings around Commonwealth (I urge everyone to attend these meetings, ask him tough questions on climate science, Star Scientific, Chefgate, etc., and make sure you videotape what he says!).

*Richmond Rally: Hundreds gather in response to Zimmerman verdict

*Chesapeake Bay cleanup deal in the works

*Fairfax City abortion clinic, busiest in Virginia, closes (“NOVA Women’s Healthcare… was the largest abortion provider, but thousands of women also relied on them for birth control and other health care, and they went to NOVA because they could not afford care otherwise. Now they are left without their trusted health-care provider, in part due to politicians. It’s definitely a loss.”)

*Wayward snake cuts power to 10,000 in Northern Virginia

*Data show car title loans grow in Virginia in 2012 (Not good.)

*Rainy weather a mixed bag for Virginia’s crops

*Virginia to preserve last-of-its-kind bridge (“Humpback Bridge is the last of its kind in U.S.”)

*Denard Span, Nationals top Marlins in 10 innings to head into all-star break one game over .500 (The Nats have 48 wins in 95 games, probably need 90 wins or more to make the playoffs. That means they have to win at least 42 of their final 67 games, which would be a torrid 63% pace or greater. Good luck!)