Tag Archives: Hall of Shame

Deny Supervisor Delgaudio’s Funding Request

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The Loudoun County BoS will vote on a request to grant Supervisor about $5,000 for a campaign newsletter. If the BoS understands the purpose of the newsletter, they’ll deny the request. Regarding the situation, there’s a good letter in the online version of the Leesburg Today that exposes the machinations of Supervisor Delgaudio’s use of taxpayer funded newsletters. The letter also demonstrates the possible illegal collaboration between the Sterling Supervisor and Dave LaRock’s 33rd House District campaign.

How much information was shared? Were voter lists shared? Was the value of the information reported as an in-kind contribution? There are many, many outstanding questions. The letter is inlined below, emphasis mine. Continue reading →

The Cheating Republicans

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It may sound harsh to call Republicans, or anyone for that matter, “cheaters.”

But what else can you call a political party that has dropped any pretense about suppressing the vote nationwide and made it a party policy that their presidential primary candidates will duck the tough questions in their upcoming public debates?

After Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt “47%” Romney disappeared into an electoral abyss deeper than anything imagined in Lord of the Rings, the Republican leadership said that they learned their lesson.

They were going to reach out to persons of color, to seniors, women and to the young, enlarge their political tent, and embrace those who they couldn’t attract in 2012 so that they’d pull the Republican voting lever in 2016.

Well they’re “not gonna do it.”

Instead they have mostly Southern legislatures, in 14 states, passing laws that the Justice Brennan Center says will likely suppress about 5 million votes, and that’s quite enough votes to make the difference in the 2016 presidential election. Continue reading →

AG Ken Cuccinelli – “Ah yes, I remember it well!”

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In the grand classical musical, “Gigi,” Maurice Chevalier as Honore sings to Hermione Gingold as Mamita.

Maurice starts, “We met at nine,” Hermione corrects, “we met at eight.”

Maurice again, “I was on time;” Hermione, “you were late.”

Maurice’s finishes, “Ah yes, I remember it well.”

Our Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli, could sing a duet, a kind of odd coupling, with Jonnie Williams, the Star Scientific CEO.

Ken might start, “we were at the beach,” and Jonnie, “we were in New York.”

Ken, “We’ve no ethical breach;” Jonnie, “Are you a dork?”

Ken, “Ah yes, I remember it well.” Continue reading →

Eugene Delgaudio’s Identity Crisis

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A chastened Supervisor E. Delgaudio listening to the public demanding his censure (photo J. Flannery)

Sterling Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio lost his ever-present orange hat, his open smile, his false swagger and his law suit when he tried to prevent the Board of Supervisor from having a hearing last Wednesday on what Mr. Delgaudio did or did not do to abuse staff and misuse and mingle County resources with his gay-bashing hate group and his campaign fund-raising activities.

Mr. Delgaudio said he wanted to know before last Wednesday’s meeting what the Board’s specific charges were.

The Board listed five charges, with the help of Board Member, Mr. Shawn M. Williams, drawing principally upon the 8-page statement filed by Ms. Donna Mateer, a former staffer (submitted last March)(that Mr. Delgaudio has had ever since), and the recent critical grand jury report (June 24, 2013)(that didn’t indict but did plainly identify various kinds of official misconduct by Mr. Delgaudio).

Mr. Delgaudio wanted an opportunity to respond.

Chairman Scott York called the Board into a Committee of the Whole in public so that Mr. Delgaudio could.

When given the opportunity, Mr Delgaudio lost his voice.

Mr. Delgaudio carped, sniveled and complained that he needed more time. Continue reading →

Why does Ken Cuccinelli want to leave Virginia children vulnerable to sexual abuse?

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In 2003, as surely everyone knows, Virginia’s archaic and nearly universally ignored “Crimes Against Nature” law was rendered unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in Lawrence v Texas. Because it is unconstitutional, because it is a blanket prohibition of oral and anal sex for everyone, it can’t be used to prosecute anyone. Case in point: When the law was used in 2005 to prosecute a 47-year-old man for soliciting a 17-year-old girl to perform oral sex, the conviction was overturned.

That outcome was perfectly predictable – and avoidable. In 2004, there was a bipartisan effort in the Virginia legislature to fix the law by eliminating the part that makes it unconstitutional:

§ 18.2-361. Crimes against nature.

A. Any person who (i) carnally knows in any manner any brute animal is guilty of a Class 6 felony, or (ii) carnally knows any male or female person by the anus or by or with the mouth, or voluntarily submits to such carnal knowledge, is guilty of a Class 6 felony 3 misdemeanor, except as provided in subsection B. B. The provisions of clause (ii) of this subsection shall not apply where all persons are consenting adults who are not in a public place and who are not aiding, abetting, procuring, engaging in or performing any act in furtherance of prostitution.

and leaving in place a statute that would be viable in the prosecution of adult predators: Continue reading →

The BoS MUST halt Supervisor Delgaudio’s recruiting activities

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The Loudoun County Board of Supervisor’s MUST put a halt to Supervisor Delgaudio’s youth recruiting activities and apologize to all teens for allowing the Supervisor to coerce them into joining a right-wing club with the imprimatur of county government. I sent a letter to the BoS stating such.

Here is how the letter opens:

The purpose of this letter is to recommend that you bar Supervisor Delgaudio from sponsoring the “Eugene Delgaudio Sterling Teen Job Fair.” The Sterling Supervisor uses the job fair to recruit youth into a right-wing political club that has a history of violence, defamation and hatred towards minorities and progressive causes. Furthermore, this board should send a letter of apology the participants of prior job fairs and their parents advising them that the county was not aware of the recruitment activity and that it does not endorse or sponsor the Sterling Supervisor’s recruiting activities. I’m requesting that you take this into consideration at your July 17, 2013 meeting under the agenda item “Grand Jury Report: Follow-up on Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio Investigation.” Continue reading →

NVTA’s bad and ugly: bicycles and pedestrians

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The NVTA's "good"

Have you ever driven around Loudoun County and observed:

  1. Shopping centers designed exclusively for automobile access even though they’re  walking distance from residential developments?
  2. Pedestrians venturing to cross dangerous very wide divided highways to get from a residential area to a shopping center?
  3. Jogging and bicycle paths to nowhere; paths that border a residential development and then abruptly stop?
  4. Major routes where bicycles and pedestrians are simply prohibited?

If you ever wondered who thought this is not only acceptable, but a “good idea,” look no further than the NVTA. Continue reading →

Prison Fellowship Ministries’ Klunder Problem

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The AP reports “Prison counselors readied PR plan after kidnapping of 2 Iowa girls.”

Days after two Iowa girls were kidnapped, a national group that provided faith-based counseling to their abductor before his release from prison was putting a public relations plan in motion and preparing to protect its image, records released Thursday show.

Michael James Klunder, was first accused of assault with intent to commit sexual abuse in 1986, when he was just fifteen years old. Five years later, he kidnapped and assaulted an twenty-one year old girl. He then kidnapped two three year old children and left them alive and abandoned in a trash bin fifty miles from where they were abducted.

Klunder graduated from the Iowa’s unconstitutional (and defunct) Innerchange Freedom Initiative faith-based counseling program. Unlike the media outlets Breakpoint and the Colson Center for “Christian” Worldview, IFI is the one program where Loudoun’s Prison Fellowship Ministries actually councils prisoners. The AP report continues.

Court records show that his Bible counselor heaped praise on Klunder when he was discharged, saying he was at the top of his class and “a very intelligent young man.”

“He is a changed individual with a good prospect of success,” the counselor wrote.

Klunder had cited his Christian-based treatment in litigation in which he was seeking parental rights for his son while behind bars, and in statements to the Iowa Bard of Parole pleading for his release.

Although he had a long history of violence, Klunder was released without supervision.

Prison Fellowship Ministries enjoys a $250K Loudoun tax exemption and is a local Republican darling. John Whitbeck, Chairman of the Republican 10th Congressional District Committee and leader of the Government Reform Commission outsourcing study suggested that Loudoun outsource social services to PFM. Congressman Frank Wolf was awarded the PFM Wilberforce award in 1990.

 

Breaking and Entering

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We Dems expected President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to offend our civil liberties.

We didn’t expect President Barack Obama, the constitutional law professor, to go back on his campaign promise to make a course correction to cure the over-reaching of the Bush Administration.

We were foolish to expect better.

Without regard to partisan coloration, our public officials and our government just can’t stop poking their noses into our private papers and communications.

The Fourth Amendment, by which we are purportedly protected, guaranteed we’d be secure” in our “persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

This guarantee has been rendered almost meaningless by the actions of our government from the federal to the county level.  Applications to search and seize are routinely approved by magistrates and judges.  The basis for the government’s searches are often kept secret. Continue reading →

Dave LaRock’s social media problem

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In an article published Wednesday, Times-Mirror reporter Trevor Baratko explores the “wild, wild west” of campaigning in a still emerging online social media environment. Baratko approached my husband and me for this article because we had both been removed multiple times after “liking” Dave LaRock’s campaign page on Facebook. It’s common practice on Facebook to “like” a page for the purpose of monitoring the page’s activity and engaging in dialogue, and as I note in comments at the Times-Mirror, we have at no time been enabled to participate in discussion on that page although LaRock is campaigning to be our representative in the House of Delegates.

It’s an open question how exactly candidates for public office should navigate the new environment in which they find themselves. Many public figures and businesses have discovered that blocking critical comments from their Facebook pages only makes them appear imperious and as if they have something to hide. For an example of a different way to handle criticism (or in this case, open hostility and threats) see how the group Queer at Patrick Henry College dealt with PHC Chancellor Mike Farris’ comments on their Facebook page.

Facebook management isn’t the only area in which Dave LaRock has exhibited an inability to tolerate disagreement or criticism, however. A need for control coupled with entitlement, the sense that he has a special right to operate above the law, seems to be the character trait that most animates him. His 2012 arrest (final disposition still pending) for trespassing and destruction of property has become somewhat well known, prompting a falsehood-riddled “damage control” post (authored under an unaccountable pseudonym on a Republican blog) that LaRock is now distributing as his official statement on the matter. Continue reading →