Our immigration system is more than bent, it’s completely broken. From deporting Boy Scouts to secretly sending the comatose to the third-world, even though they’re Americans, our system creates bizzare, perverse incentives to break the law, evade responsibility and invites corruption at all levels. Here in Loudoun, our neighbors and neighborhoods are directly impacted, but not in the way you might think.

• For every neighbor afraid to call the police for fear of immigration authorities, another criminal and gang is given power and authority with a commensurate decline in the rule of law.
• For every American citizen born of undocumented migrants, another family is threatened with being torn apart.
• For every residence abandoned by neighbors living in terror of discovery, another neighborhood suffers from blight and foreclosure.

This is a crisis of justice, and needs to be addressed, now. Fortunately, Immigration Reform For America is standing up to do that. We Democrats in Loudoun will do well to join them.

REFORM IMMIGRATION USING YOUR CELL PHONE!

Text JUSTICE (or JUSTICIA for Spanish) to 69866 to receive action alerts and updates in the fight for immigration reform. Be the first to know when a bill hits Congress! We can win, but we need your help!

Follow below for some more discussion of immigration reform and Loudoun.Loudoun County has experienced significant growth in its immigrant community, and we are stronger for it. Recent immigrants pay taxes, start businesses and give back to their communities at rates equal to, if not higher than, citizens who have spent their entire lives here. And they assimilate faster than previous waves of immigrants as well.

Unfortunately for us and our neighborhoods, many of these neighbors cannot avail themselves of public safety services, even though they pay taxes. They cannot get justice from exploitative employers who hold them to a form of indentured servitude.

There is legislation in Congress that solves this problem, and 78% of Americans support it.

We Democrats should be fighting for advancement of comprehensive immigration reform. It has nationwide support, it creates a clear contrast between our Party and our opposition, and can bring a huge and as-yet unactivated population of Loudoun voters to the polls on our side, and keep them with us for a generation.

And leaving the political considerations aside, it’s just the right thing to do.

Immigrants in our neighborhoods today live in fear and have no path to justice. In a nation that ends our pledge with “and justice for all” this travesty needs to be alleviated. The time is now. Let’s get it done.  

(If there are any elected officials reading this, I humbly implore you to take the pledge to fix this problem. Ignoring the problem because it is difficult or perceived to be unpopular is not going to make it go away.)

By the way, they’re not “illegal immigrants” or “illegals.” A person cannot be illegal, and to assert that they can be is both dehumanizing and ignorant. Some of our migrant neighbors are undocumented, just like you and I are undocumented when our driver’s license expires and we drive to the DMV – under an expired license – to renew it. Or when we trespass without written permission to take a shortcut across train tracks.

I leave you with this.  

Last night at the LCDC meeting, Supervisor Andrea McGimsey gave a great presentation on the risks of energy sources that we use, and the techniques we as a county can use to mitigate and manage those risks. The presentation was informative, and stirred some local pride within me when I found out that Loudoun County is a nationally-recognized leader in energy planning thanks to the hardworking efforts of our Democratic Supervisors.

I’ve long been an advocate for a measure already used MDOT, VDOT and our neighbors in PG County: Don’t mow on Air Quality Action Days. It should be relatively straightforward for the County to prohibit its landscapers from running powered landscaping equipment on Code Orange and Code Red days. In doing so, the County can lead by example, and perhaps influence the policies and contracts of the multivarious Home Owners Associations in Loudoun to implement similar clauses in their landscaping agreements.

A second idea follows from the first: Allow liberal teleworking on Air Quality Action Days. I have an agreement with my employers to work from home on Code Red and Orange days. With the major telework programs already in place, it seems logical to extend an air quality policy option that would allow employees who can to work from home when driving to work would exacerbate an already dangerous air quality day.

If you agree with these ideas, please follow below the fold for a draft letter you can send to our elected officials.Below is a sample letter you could write to our elected officials. The best way to implement good policy is to write our elected officials with specific ideas. They’re always happy to hear from their constituents, and you would be surprised how much can get done by simply engaging with our leaders.

The address for our Board of Supervisors is:

Supervisor [Name]

P.O. Box 7000

Leesburg VA 20177

Thank you for your service to Loudoun County. Reducing our environmental impact is critically important to preserving the quality of life we have here, and I’m proud that my local government is taking action to lead on this issue with programs like the County Energy Strategy.

In the spirit of sharing ideas, I wanted to write today and offer my two small suggestions that might help further mitigate the impact of our activities on our local environment.

1. No Code Orange and Red Day Mowing – I believe that my elected leaders should take steps to eliminate mowing and other powered landscaping on days when the air quality is bad. Our government has enough purchasing power to impact the market for powered landscaping services, and should be using that power to implement contract terms with its landscaping vendors prohibiting powered landscaping on code red and orange air quality days. I understand this may lead to grass growing a bit taller than it might otherwise, but that’s a price I’m more than happy to pay to help mitigate my neighbors asthma.

2. Teleworking on Code Orange and Red Days – In a County that prides itself on a 21st century economy and workforce, it seems logical to allow liberal telework on days when keeping cars off our roads is critical to air quality. If this were implemented government-wide for all employees with the capacity to work from home, it would make a difference for our neighbors with asthma, if nothing else. We have snow days because its dangerous to drive, why not air days because it is dangerous to breathe?

Thank you for your consideration, and all you do.

One of the greatest things about the advent of blogging in our political discourse is the fact that claims and assertions can be immediately fact-checked. Of course, it means that lies and misinformation can also spread rapidly, but well written political commentary should come with links to primary sources that backup the essentials of that argument.

Media Matters has been one of the most important voices for truth in politics. It has spent years criticizing media outlets for their credulity in reporting claims by pundits, politicians and others. Now, they’re taking their skills and applying them to the politicians themselves on a new site, Political Correction. Here’s a taste.

Massey Energy, the Virginia-based coal company currently under federal investigation after an explosion at its Upper Branch coal mine in West Virginia killed 29 miners earlier in the year, has received a safety award from an industry group.

…

In a press release, beleaguered Massey CEO Don Blankenship – who several years ago spent considerable sums of money getting a coal-friendly judge elected to the West Virginia Supreme Court – gloated, “All of these awards are well deserved recognition of how our members are committed to working safely and that Massey’s safety culture is effective throughout the organization.”

The safety culture Blankenship alludes to is quite elusive. – Political Correction

Go. Read.Here at Loudoun Progress, we hope to provide a small slice of the service that Media Matters provides on a national basis. We hope to be accurate and truthful in revealing the disingenuous motives and simple falsehoods at the root of some of our political opponents’ assertions and campaigns. And when and where we are wrong, we hope you’ll give us an opportunity to get it right.

Because in politics, as in life, the truth does matter.

“We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to

tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.” -Thomas Jefferson to William Roscoe, 1820.

June 3rd LCDC Meeting Features Energy & the Environment

As the LCDC launches its “Locally Grown” initiative for community service and gears up to support Jeff Barnett in the November Congressional election, we turn to a major issue that is of vital importance to Loudoun County, our state, our nation, and our planet – Energy and the Environment.

While being central to the economic recovery, job creation (including the green economy) and transportation challenges, “Energy and the Environment” leads the daily news cycle with updates on the oil disaster in the Gulf that starkly illustrates the dangers of the “drill-baby-drill” mantra echoed by Sarah Palin and her followers. See one newspaper’s opinion in the following editorial entitled “Gulf’s Lesson for Virginia.”

Amid the bad news in the Gulf, several magical initiatives are underway in Loudoun. At our June 3rd meeting, learn much more about the inspiring new efforts in Loudoun to lead the nation in Green Programs from Loudoun Supervisor Andrea McGimsey. Andrea’s talk will be followed by an energetic Q&A session.

Date: Thursday, June 3rd

Place: Tolbert Elementary School (Leesburg) Map

Social: 6:30pm

Meeting: 7:00pm – 9:00pm

Post-meeting Social: 9:15pm – ??

P.S. Remember to bring unopened coffee to the June 3rd meeting for donation to our monthly food drive.

Visit the LCDC Facebook page for the latest newsI’ll be there with my son (and, yes, his DS. No sitter tonight). We’ll be leaving early, but I hope to see you there.

Read it.

Crossposted at Equality Loudoun

This is an interesting one from Chuck Colson (of Prison Fellowship Ministries; read more about them here). In case you’re not aware, PFM operates a tax-free multi-million dollar headquarters located in Ashburn, and founder Chuck Colson produces both a daily radio and email commentary, broadcast nationwide. His topics rarely have anything to do with ministering to prisoners; rather, they represent salvos in the Republican/Christian nationalist-manufactured “culture war,” and reliably telegraph the talking points we can expect to hear from the rest of the Republican noise machine on any given issue.

Today’s commentary concerns the coming repeal of the disastrous “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.  According to Colson, “unless something is done,” military chaplains will be drummed out of the service en masse when gay and lesbian servicemembers no longer have to lie about this important part of their humanity in order to serve their country. Why? Because the hypothetical chaplains will have to “confront a profoundly difficult moral choice” between providing spiritual support to all servicemembers who ask for it, and…what? Refusing to do that? It seems that a military policy that actively encourages people to lie has not created any moral dilemmas for these hypothetical chaplains, but never mind.

Here, Colson approvingly quotes some retired chaplains quoting Colson, from his own “Manhattan Declaration”:

We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God’s.

Consider: Are the armed forces of the United States “Caesar’s,” or are they “God’s”? What are the implications of this (I assume) hasty and unexamined admission by Chuck Colson that he thinks military service is not in the realm of service to our nation, but is instead something to be rendered unto his God? And why are we, the taxpayers of Loudoun, supporting this anti-democratic nonsense?

On May 28, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 5136, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011. The bill passed by a 229-186 vote, and incredibly, our own Congressman, Frank Wolf (R-VA) voted against this bill.

It’s really interesting that a congressman who voted for every defense authorization bill during the previous administration (and the concurrent explosion in federal spending because of it) would conveniently vote against defense authorization this year.

Here are some of the things included in H.R. 5136 that Congressman Wolf voted against funding:The act would:

• require the Administration to develop a National Military Strategic Plan to ensure Iran does not acquire nuclear weapons

• authorize additional funds for the protection of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, including $3.5 billion for measures to counter improvised explosive devices

• provide $7.2 billion for new equipment for National Guard and Reserve units

• provide an average 1.9 percent pay increase for military personnel in Fiscal Year 2011 (.5 percent above the President’s request) and provides hostile fire/imminent danger pay increase from $225 to $260 per month and a family separation allowance increase from $250 to $285 per month

• extend health care coverage to dependent children up to age 26 for TRICARE Reserve Select beneficiaries

• allow wounded warriors to apply for expedited security clearance processing in order to facilitate the hiring of individuals who have had their military careers cut short due to a physical disability.

Is Frank Wolf against ensuring that Iran doesn’t acquire nukes? Is he against protecting the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan? He doesn’t believe that troops should get less than a 2% increase in pay? He’s against wounded servicemen getting an expedited security clearance so they can work?

Of course not; I don’t believe any rational American is against all of that. What Frank Wolf is doing, though, is using our brave military men and women as pawns in a political game, in a unified (or mostly unified) Republican front to see to it that the Democrats, and by extension President Obama, fail. Troops who put their lives on the line every day to ensure our freedom.  Frank Wolf obviously believes that political propaganda is more important than funding the troops. As a military veteran, it saddens me to see my congressman behave like this.

Jeff Barnett knows better. He served as one of those troops for 26 years, while Frank Wolf was sitting behind a desk in Congress.  Jeff’s own daughter is flying jets in Afghanistan. He has seen the ravages of war firsthand, and second-hand through his children. Jeff Barnett knows how important it is to support our troops, not to use them as fodder for his political games.

There’s a reason Jeff Barnett is out-raising Frank Wolf on the campaign trail by nearly 2-to-1. It’s because people believe Jeff can do a better job in Congress than the incumbent.

Please support Jeff Barnett for Congress.

From Jeff Barnett’s Twitter account:

For Immediate Release: Jeff Barnett Out-raises Incumbent Frank Wolf by Nearly 2:1 Margin: http://tinyurl.com/2aod7kc

Keep on rolling, Jeff!  

Tomorrow, the Board of Supervisors will be considering an application by Potomac Radio, LLC to construct three radio towers on leased land owned by Loudoun Water, in order to bring WAGE back on the air under the auspices of a 50,000 watt “blowtorch” of a radio station.

A noble cause, right? After all, WAGE was Loudoun’s quaint little AM radio station that broadcast local news & sports, had local advertising, and occasionally some Capitals or Orioles games. But they went dark a few years back because of lack of advertising. They had drifted away from local programming into brokered and syndicated programming, which was cheaper than hiring good on-air talent.

Not so simple.  The area where Potomac Radio is looking to build the towers is located in a floodplain, and near a heron rookery. Supervisor Kelly Burk has an environmental issue with the tower location, but someone with whom I spoke who has intimate knowledge of the situation has been assured by “experts” that the impact will be “minimal and mitigated”.  If it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me.

A concern, then, would be WAGE’s provision of local content, with which they did a great job in their heyday. The owner of Potomac Radio, Rockville, Maryland resident James Weitzman (who made a large donation to Eugene Delgaudio’s campaign a few years back), is eager to get WAGE back on the air again. One could question his motives – AM radio in Loudoun County, in an age where iPods and satellite radio are prevalent? How would someone make money in such a limited environment? Easy; through brokered and/or syndicated programming.

Brokered radio is where the broadcaster pays the station for the right to use their airwaves; it’s akin to a radio infomercial. Most of the international/ethnic and religious stations you hear on the AM dial are brokered programming. Syndicated programming works the other way, where the broadcaster markets themselves and the station owner pays for the privilege. Syndicated hosts generally run towards right-wing hate talk, a la Michael Savage, the infamous Glenn Beck, and Alex Jones.

Potomac Radio also owns WBIS 1190 in Annapolis (as subsidiary Nations Radio, LLC), which provides brokered business news and syndicated programming. Interestingly, Potomac Radio also received approval from the FCC on October 29, 2008 to move WAGE’s signal from 1200 to 1190 on the AM dial. If WAGE does indeed go back on the air, WBIS, with only a 10,000 watt daytime signal, would need to shut down, as it would be overtaken by WAGE’s signal. Presumably then, the programming currently being broadcast on WBIS would be transferred to WAGE (and possibly even the call letters, eventually), and would cover a larger area.

Leesburg Town Councilman Ken Reid had a letter published in Sunday’s Washington Post which (his environmental ignorance notwithstanding) stated his support to bring WAGE back as a “Leesburg-based station”. Since WBIS doesn’t provide any local programming, I don’t see any indication that WAGE would provide any, either.  So Mr. Reid is being disingenuous when he states that the return of WAGE would be good for the county. If WAGE does come back on the air, it won’t resemble the old WAGE in the least. As local radio maven Dave Hughes (aka “DCRTV Dave“) said on the Loudoun Times-Mirror discussion board, “Unless the station returns to local-centric programming, the county will receive little or no benefit.”

Mr. Weitzman is out for one thing – to make as much money as he can, for himself, Loudoun County be damned. Nothing wrong with making money, just don’t go around professing that ignoring and ridiculing environmental concerns in the guise of returning WAGE to the airwaves is serving a civic purpose. Because it’s not. There is no longer any FCC requirement to provide local content, and if Mr. Weitzman’s current holdings are an indication of his future ideas for WAGE, we won’t see any. And that’s a loss for Loudoun.

Tomorrow, the Board of Supervisors will be considering an application by Potomac Radio, LLC to construct three radio towers on leased land owned by Loudoun Water, in order to bring WAGE back on the air under the auspices of a 50,000 watt “blowtorch” of a radio station.

A noble cause, right? After all, WAGE was Loudoun’s quaint little AM radio station that broadcast local news & sports, had local advertising, and occasionally some Capitals or Orioles games. But they went dark a few years back because of lack of advertising. They had drifted away from local programming into brokered and syndicated programming, which was cheaper than hiring good on-air talent.

Not so simple.  The area where Potomac Radio is looking to build the towers is located in a floodplain, and near a heron rookery. Supervisor Kelly Burk has an environmental issue with the tower location, but someone with whom I spoke who has intimate knowledge of the situation has been assured by “experts” that the impact will be “minimal and mitigated”.  If it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me.

The main concern, then, would be WAGE’s provision of local content, with which they did a great job in their heyday. The owner of Potomac Radio, Rockville’s James Weitzman (who made a large donation to Eugene Delgaudio’s campaign a few years back), is eager to get WAGE on the air again. One could question his motives – AM radio in Loudoun County, in an age where iPods and satellite radio are prevalent? How would someone make money in such a limited environment? Easy; through brokered and/or syndicated programming.

Brokered radio is where the broadcaster pays the station for the right to use their airwaves; it’s akin to a radio infomercial. Most of the international/ethnic and religious stations you hear on the AM dial are brokered programming. Syndicated programming works the other way, where the broadcaster markets themselves and the station owner pays for the privilege. Syndicated hosts generally run towards right-wing hate talk, a la Michael Savage, the infamous Glenn Beck, and Alex Jones.

Potomac Radio also owns WBIS 1190 in Annapolis (as subsidiary Nations Radio, LLC), which provides brokered business news and syndicated programming. Interestingly, Potomac Radio also received approval from the FCC on October 29, 2008 to move WAGE’s signal from 1200 to 1190 on the AM dial. If WAGE does indeed go back on the air, WBIS, with only a 10,000 watt daytime signal, would need to shut down, as it would be overtaken by WAGE’s signal. Presumably then, the programming currently being broadcast on WBIS would be transferred to WAGE (and possibly even the call letters, eventually), and the coverage area would increase.

Leesburg Town Councilman Ken Reid had a letter published in Sunday’s Washington Post which (his environmental ignorance notwithstanding) stated his support to bring WAGE back as a “Leesburg-based station”. Since WBIS doesn’t provide any local programming, I don’t see any indication that WAGE would provide any, either.  So Mr. Reid is being disingenuous when he states that the return of WAGE would be good for the county. If WAGE does come back on the air, it won’t resemble the old WAGE in the least. As local radio maven Dave Hughes (aka “DCRTV Dave”) said on the Loudoun Times-Mirror discussion board, “Unless the station returns to local-centric programming, the county will receive little or no benefit.”

Mr. Weitzman is out for one thing – to make as much money as he can, Loudoun County be damned. Nothing wrong with making money, just don’t go around professing that ignoring and ridiculing environmental concerns in the guise of returning WAGE to the airwaves is serving a civic purpose. Because it’s not. There is no longer any FCC requirement to provide local content, and if Mr. Weitzman’s current holdings are an indication of his future ideas for WAGE, we won’t see any.