Monthly Archives: November 2011

One more problematic image: The case of Ting-Yi Oei

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With all the focus on images lately – from witlessly offensive to intentionally menacing to so hilariously unexamined that the possibility of sabotage has been raised – it’s no wonder that Governor McDonnell didn’t stay longer for a photo op with Loudoun Republicans.

There’s another image for voters to keep in mind. It’s an image that a man had cause to upload to his phone one day in the course of doing his job – and he paid dearly for it, due to an inexplicable series of actions taken by Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Plowman.

TOLD THAT a judge was dismissing all charges against him, Virginia educator Ting-Yi Oei had just one thought: “Hallelujah.” Given his nightmarish prosecution on child pornography charges, it was an understandable, even restrained, reaction. What’s not understandable is why criminal charges were ever brought against an unassuming assistant high school principal who was just trying to do his job. Loudoun County residents are right to wonder about the unsettling circumstances of this case and to demand better answers.

–A Nightmare in Loudoun; Why was a respected educator subjected to baseless child pornography charges? Washington Post, April 30, 2009.

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Mark Herring Stands With Veterans

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Mark Herring does so much for us here in Loudoun from the Virginia Senate that many of his accomplishments for the wider commonwealth get under-reported and under-appreciated here in his home county. Given some of the things in the news, I thought it might be nice to post something positive for a change, and Sen. Herring’s service to Virginia’s veterans seemed an obvious choice.

Virginia Guard recognizes top units, receives resolutions from General Assembly

Sen. Herring Awarding the Virginia National Guard a Commendation Resolution.


For example, Sen. Herring is the Co-Chair of the Virginia National Guard Caucus in the General Assembly, and has been instrumental in making financial help for veterans easier to provide. During the 2010 Session, Senator Herring sponsored and passed legislation that exempts payments to individuals from the Virginia Military Family Relief Fund from state income tax.

He has stood up for the rights of our veterans and their families. In 2008, he sponsored and passed the Virginia Military Parents Equal Protection Act, which protects military parents from losing important child custody and visitation rights as a result of their deployment out of the Commonwealth. And in 2011, he sponsored and passed a bill to enhance the Military Parents Equal Protection Act by allowing deployed military parents to delegate their visitation rights with children to a member of their family while they are stationed overseas. Indeed, Sen. Herring supports the service of all military families.

Now those are Virginia family values.
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Patricia Phillips is Pro-Communist

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Patricia Phillips is incensed at the treatment of Soviet communist veterans in Virginia. No, really. Here’s the picture of the veteran from her most recent, utterly misleading, mailing.

Note all the red stars on the medals? Or how about the “CCCP” on the one to the right of the coat’s button? And it’s pretty clearly a profile of Lenin on the medal in the top row. Clearly this veteran served the USSR with distinction! How horrible to have been treated so badly by Virginia!

In all seriousness, though, it would behoove a candidate for state Senate in the state with the largest U.S. Naval installation in the world to at least avoid using a picture of the enemy that Navy was built to defend against for fifty years in her political mail. This is more than just politics 101, this is a question of respect for the voting public who did serve.

What is with Loudoun Republicans and their inability to look at a picture and see what the rest of us see? From bloody doorways to Presidents with headshot wounds to, now, a picture of the wrong Naval veteran, Republican candidates and committees are incapable of actually looking at what they’re putting out there!

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Okay, so Plowman dropped the charges

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That doesn’t change the fact that you should still write in Joy Maloney for Broad Run School Board.

My issues with Mr. Kuester’s candidacy remain the same, I feel that people on the school board should believe in the value of public education, and should be fiscally responsible. Mr. Kuesters fails both those tests.

Mr. Kuesters sends his school-age children to private religious school. That’s his right, obviously. But I think someone who wants to be in charge of our public schools, who has school-age children, should be invested enough in the schools to have his children attend them.

The School Board has fiscal oversight over the schools budget. Mr. Kuesters filed bankruptcy last year and is in more financial hot-water this year with his HOAs.

And then there is the arrest. I have volunteered with LAWS, the Loudoun Abused Women’s Shelter, and I am aware of how common it is for abused spouses to withdraw complaints against their abusers. Mr. Kuesters may or may not have abused his wife, but whatever happened, it’s clear that he has personal issues that are too complex to be completely dealt with before swearing in on January 1.

Meanwhile, Joy Maloney has a daughter at Eagle Ridge, her family is on a good solid financial footing, and she’s not facing family turmoil. PLUS, she has a Masters in Educational Leadership and a Bachelors in Secondary Education. She taught high school for 5 years, and she works in a STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) field.

Write in Joy Maloney for Broad Run School Board.

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Crossposted at Doorbell Queen)

Unfit for office, unfit for endorsement

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I could never, had I been asked to imagine the most ridiculous and easily verifiable lie that Eugene Delgaudio might invent, have imagined something as ridiculous and easily verifiable as this:

When contacted by the Loudoun Times-Mirror for comment about the exposure of his “Blood Door” email, Mr. Delgaudio told the reporter that the Photoshopped image he had sent to his mailing list was the original and that his image had actually been Photoshopped, by the very people who caught him in this behavior, to make it “look like blood.”

Side by side image comparison by the Loudoun Times-Mirror

When the reporter told me this, I said I thought that was interesting, and suggested that she search on Google images for “blood door.” She did.

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Free Market

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It's free!I think we may finally have some insight into what Mr. Delgaudio means when he says the “free market.”

Supervisor Miller has reported this news:

I voted with a total of eight supervisors just now to deny the request from OpenBand to renew their video services franchise in Loudoun county. There was no comment from any member voting with me. The only vote to renew was that of Eugene Delgaudio, who, in the last week alone, took over seven-thousand dollars in campaign donations from OpenBand’s owner.

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Recoil

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Zombie Obama. 

Whether a mean-spirited attack on our president or a light-hearted attempt at Halloween humor (the former being the more likely), the whole situation is a train wreck. 

But there is something to be pulled out: that is the overwhelming response of condemnation and disgust from all political parties.  Looking through the comments, it’s possible to see that even self-identified republicans are indignant.  This is not what the Republican Party stands for.  This is not what any party should stand for.  This is way across the line.

And there are repercussions.  Governor McDonnell has announced that he will not attend a Get Out The Vote rally for the Loudoun County republicans scheduled for this Thursday.  The communications chair of the LCRC responsible for this e-mail blast has left his position.  There is a general movement throughout the party to distance itself from this radical position that so many Republicans resent as taking a whole spectrum of sociopolitical identities and lumping them into a single extremist position.  And until now, there has been no intra-party pushback.  I’ve said it before that we are not aware of social boundaries until we bump blithely into them.   And it looks like we’ve finally reached that limit and are recoiling.

Let’s hope the LCRC leadership is doing the same, and that this is not a façade or attempt at damage control.  Let’s hope we can see some real leadership. 

And Mr. Sell: sometimes this means stepping down to do what’s best for your party.

An unfortunate omission

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I was very impressed with the airy above-it-all tone Joe was able to summon about “the recent Halloween unpleasantness” until I saw his images, images that were apparently the point of the post.

The thing is, there’s nothing new there. We already know that there are people on the outer fringes of good judgment and civility, enough of whom might actually be dangerous that we need a Secret Service whether our president is a Democrat or a Republican. What I fear is that this post is a – I hate to say it – deliberate attempt to pretend that the images at issue in Loudoun did not come from an official Republican Party Committee and a Republican elected official, and hope that no one notices. I’m sorry, but someone did.

From the official Republican Party Committee

From the Republican elected official

Empty Apologies from Virginia Republicans

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The media, and indeed many Democrats were quick to commend the Republican Party of Virginia yesterday for quickly and thoroughly denouncing the Loudoun Republicans’ zombie-Obama-headshot comic recruiting email. Indeed, many seem to think this is a sign of more civility in Virginia politics.

It’s not. It’s a whitewash. Plain and simple.

Because at the same time the Virginia Republican Party was issuing its very public apology and repudiation, it was dropping a last-minute $25,000 contribution in the coffers of the most odious Loudoun Republican, Dick “there’s no such thing as spousal rape” Black.

If the Republican Party truly believes these tactics are unacceptable, it will tell Dick Black to refund the amount of that contribution.

“Sprawl Is The American Dream”

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With all the crazy coming out of Loudoun Republicans lately, its easy to forget that underneath that hard shell of cultural divisiveness is a sugary nougat of truly awful policies.

Take, for example, a race that has flown under the proverbial radar this year. The race for Algonkian Supervisor, which sets long-time community resident and activist (and personal friend, in the interests of full disclosure) Denise Moore Pierce against long-time conservative gadfly Suzanne Volpe. Here’s a race that can, and should turn truly on policy grounds, because there is a clear difference between the candidates, and a clear choice to be made.

Specifically, Ms. Volpe, who is running to represent a “mature” community in Loudoun, one with established neighborhoods, schools, traditions and families, is an advocate – and an unabashed one – for sprawl. Indeed, she gave a speech calling development sprawl the American Dream. A stark statement for a stark choice.

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