If you care about the environment and don’t want to see Virginia’s coastline trashed by oil companies, lease sign the “Wind Not Oil” petition by Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN).  As CCAN writes, offshore oil drilling “can never be made entirely safe, and the consequences – as we now know – can be catastrophic.” Also, it’s important to point out that “Virginia could easily get 10 percent of its electricity from offshore windmills, creating 10,000 jobs.”  Finally, of course, there’s no such thing as a “wind spill.” 🙂

For all of those reasons, we need to tell Bob McDonnell that offshore wind power, not offshore oil drilling, is  “the right direction for Virginia and the nation.”  Thanks.

The Democratic Party of Virginia slams Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli for his “latest misuse of power,” this time conducting a witch hunt against a former University of Virginia climate scientist. Sen. Mark Herring (D-33) adds, “This is Virginia, since when do we investigate professors when we disagree with them?” Apparently, that’s the way it is in the Cooch’s Virginia.

Since taking office, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has continually abused his office to meddle in the affairs of Virginia’s public colleges and universities in pursuit of his own personal, political agenda.  Last week’s civil subpoena of the University of Virginia for research by climate change science professor Dr. Michael Mann is the latest misuse of power by Attorney General Cuccinelli.

As Attorney General, Cuccinelli has issued a letter to university presidents stating that university policies prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation were illegal under Virginia law.  Ken Cuccinelli also issued a statement of full support for the questionably legal raid on JMU’s student newspaper “The Breeze” by the Rockingham County Commonwealth’s Attorney.    

“Virginia is home to some of the finest universities in the country.  Parents send their children to our schools because they will receive a high quality education, not to be subject to Ken Cuccinelli’s ideological influence,” said C. Richard Cranwell, Chairman of the Democratic Party of Virginia. “This is just the latest ‘big government’ abuse by a self-proclaimed conservative. In Cuccinelli’s world, government overreach is something other people do.”

Yesterday, University of Virginia alumnus Senator Mark Herring (D-Loudoun and Fairfax) raised serious concerns about the actions of Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.  

“On its face this seems to be a serious abuse of the power of the Attorney General,” Herring said. “This is Virginia, since when do we investigate professors when we disagree with them?”  

Herring continued, “This action will jeopardize Virginia’s ability to attract scientists and researchers to our prestigious universities for fear that they will be investigated when the Attorney General disagrees with their findings, not to mention our ability to promote advanced technology industry locating in the Commonwealth.”

UPDATE: NLS has more on the mentality of Ken Cuccinelli. It’s not pretty.

UPDATE #2: Is Bob McDonnell starting to distance himself from the Cooch? Interesting.

UPDATE #3: The UVA Faculty weighs in, saying that Kookinelli’s actions “directly threaten academic freedom.”

It’s only been about two weeks since the BP oil rig in blew in the Gulf and the spill began its relentless move toward the fragile coast.  Yet even as the massive oil spill threatens the Florida Keys, and possibly the entire East Coast, Gov. Bob McDonnell is using the opportunity to exploit his being in the pocket of drill-baby-drill Big Oil.  And to illustrate how deeply in the pocket he is, Think Progress reports that McDonnell has traveled to a BP-funded conference. Talk about rubbing the nation’s collective nose in the oil spill!  Bob is nothing if he is not abrasive. Unlike other Virginia officials who want to postpone drilling off Virginia’s coast pending an investigation into the causes of the disaster, he’s also pushing  even harder for more offshore drilling as this article indicates.

So, on Monday, the Guv traveled to Houston, capitol of clean environments everywhere (snark) to join his buddies in Big-Oilism.  As TP points out, this puts him in the company of folks like David Vitter, who has used the disaster in the Gulf as an opportunity to exploit the situation and gain more subsidies for Louisiana.  Just what Louisiana needs (snark)!

 

You have to wonder sometimes at the sheer crass depravity of the oil barons and their buddies.  Speaking of oil barons, there is mounting evidence that Halliburton (the nation’s second largest oil services company)is allegedly at least partially behind the Gulf’s massive spill.  Read about it here, here, and here.

In Congress, the House has called hearings and summoned BP, Halliburton and others.  And Dick Cheney has the nerve to talk to us about homeland security. Come to think of it, Dick has been pretty quiet during the past two weeks.

I found this story to be interesting, but also frustrating.  Why would 60% of Capitol Hill’s “twitterverse” be composed of Republican members?  Why would House Republicans send 5 times as many Tweets as their Democratic counterparts, and 35% more in the Senate?  Why would 89% of of Congressional Republicans have their own YouTube channels, compared to just 74% for Democrats? Also, 8 of the top 10 most viewed and most subscribed channels are from the Republicans?

Part of this GOP dominance is that, as Dave Weigel says, the party out of power has more to protest.  Thus, when George W. Bush was in office, the Democratic netroots grew by leaps and bounds. Today, with Republicans out of power, the “rightosphere” also appears to be growing fast, while the “leftosphere” appears to be falling behind. Part of it is also money: Newt Gingrich says that campaigns should spend as much money on new media as for radio and television.  Instead, what we saw in 2009 was striking; according to techPresident:

…Deeds was simply outmatched online by McDonnell and the web of consultants he reached out to — and funded — throughout the course of the campaign. It’s a disparity that grew worse as the Deeds campaign struggled to the finish line, and advisors with the Democratic campaign poured more money into the more traditional mediums of television and radio. In the first three weeks of October, for example, Deeds poured more than $3 million into television and radio ads. According to Virginia Public Access Project (VPAP) filings, Deeds dedicated just over $117,000 or so to online politicking through late October.

In other words, Deeds spent on TV in the campaign’s closing weeks alone more than twenty five times what he dropped on the Internet and other digital efforts over the course of his entire bid for the governor’s mansion.

The point of this isn’t to pick on the Deeds campaign, per se.  Instead, this seems to be a major, and common, failing among Democratic candidates, state party organizations, and many others. The Republicans simply appear to “get it” online far better than Democrats, and also to be willing to put their money where their mouths are.  Unfortunately, despite the fact that new media – blogs, social networking, YouTube, etc. – provides tremendous “bang for the buck,” many Democratic political consultants appear to remain mired in old ways of thinking, where raising money to spend much of it on broadcast TV and radio in the last couple weeks was the way to go. With advances in technology of all kinds, it’s not the way to go anymore, yet the model remains strikingly stagnant on the Democratic side.  That needs to change, or no matter how much stronger Democrats’ message is, they’re not going to be able to translate that into victories at the polls.

P.S. As I wrote last November, a reasonable share for a campaign’s new media budget is around 10% of the campaign’s overall ad budget.  The Deeds campaign spent about 1/10th or 1/20th of that (0.5%-1.0%). Part of this disparity results from political campaigns being run by the same people who’ve been running them for years, and these people tend do what they’ve always done – TV, direct mail, and not much else. In fact, from what I hear, these people don’t even understand cable TV, let alone “new media.”  But hey, as long as those consultants are fat and happy, who cares if we actually win elections, right?

Courtesy of House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s office, please click on the image to “embiggen.” In short, Republicans create the mess and tear things down, Democrats clean it up and start building things up again.