I sometimes find Glenn Greenwald to be a bit much. I know that makes me a blasphemer in the progressive blogosphere, but here I stand and I can do no more. That being said, his post about the furor over the Park51 Islamic Center in Manhattan made me think about the current “debate” over the undebateable (Private Property + Freedom of Religion = Essential Core of American Values) differently.

If you chose to narrowly define the topic of the controversy as nothing more than the Manhattan address of Park 51, then obviously it pales in importance to the unemployment crisis, our ongoing wars, and countless other political issues.

But that’s an artificially narrow and misguided way of understanding what this dispute is about.  The intense animosity toward Muslims driving this campaign extends far beyond Ground Zero, and manifests in all sorts of significant and dangerous ways. – Glenn Greenwald

All too often, pro-Christian protests are not so much pro-Christian as against other faiths, or even against other threads of Christianity, let alone faiths that do not accept the divinity of Christ.

Which brings us to the relevance of the Park51 protests to Loudoun County: the revisiting of Courthouse displays that will take place before the Board of Supervisors in September. If you believe that the crazy that is going on in Lower Manhattan couldn’t happen here, rest assured that the irrational vitriol so prevalent there will be appearing shortly before our elected officials in the form of a re-energized false controversy over Christmas displays.  It is important to remember that we all agree that freedom of speech is a correct basis for determining what should and should not be permitted on public, courthouse grounds. It’s also important to remember that this is a manufactured controversy meant to allow the empowered majority (white, Christian males) to play the part of the victim even while persecuting real minorities. Thus, back to Greenwald:

To belittle this issue as though it’s the equivalent of the media’s August fixation on shark attacks or Chandra Levy — or, worse, to want to ignore it because it’s harmful to the Democrats’ chances in November — is profoundly irresponsible.  The Park51 conflict is driven by, and reflective of, a pervasive animosity toward a religious minority — one that has serious implications for how we conduct ourselves both domestically and internationally.

…

If Park51 ends up moving or if opponents otherwise succeed in defeating it, it will seriously bolster and validate  the ugly premises at the heart of this campaign:  that Muslims generally are responsible for 9/11, Terrorism justifies and even compels our restricting the equals rights and access of Americans Muslims, and more broadly, the animosity and suspicions towards Muslims generally are justified, or at least deserving of respect.  As Aziz Poonawalla put it:  “if the project does fail, then I think that the message that will be sent is that bigotry and fear of Muslims is not just permitted, it is effective.” – Glenn Greenwald

And that is why it is critical to watch the activities around the September hearings on Courthouse displays so closely. The forces of intolerance in our local society (not just our nation, but here in Loudoun) want to know how far they can push the envelope. They want to legitimize bombastic bigotry as an acceptable form of civic discourse. It is important for the voices of reason and compassion among neighbors to be heard in the face of what is sure to be a litany of false hyperbole from conservative-organized speaker after speaker.

I make a bold prediction that I pray is wrong: The September hearings about Courthouse displays will feature anti-Islamic language and anecdotes. That is, after all, the theme in the air on the right. When the Board of Supervisors held a hearing about the Chesapeake Bay Act, more than one speaker cited such regulation as a outgrowth of fascist progressive policies originating in 1930s Europe, a talking point which was then making the rounds on Glenn Beck and right-wing talk radio. So do not be surprised when anti-Muslim intolerance makes its appearance in discussions of Christmas displays. That’s the current talking point (well, that and hatred of babies).

Stands against intolerance, bigotry and, yes, crazy, must be taken locally, not just nationally. It is at the local level that these divisive impulses calcify and metastasize to become feeders into a negative national discourse. It is here, at the root, that they must be cut out. And it is up to us, the citizens of Loudoun, to do the weeding.

That’s exactly the message that will be sent, and that’s what makes this conflict so significant.  Obviously, not all opponents of Park51 are as overtly hateful as those in that video — and not all opponents are themselves bigots — but the position they’ve adopted is inherently bigoted, as it seeks to impose guilt and blame on a large demographic group for the aberrational acts of a small number of individual members.   And one thing is certain:  if this campaign succeeds, it will proliferate and the sentiments driving it will become even more potent.  Hatemongers always become emboldened when they triumph. – Glenn Greenwald

Remember this, come September’s hearings: If you stay silent in the face of crazy, you let crazy win. Take a stand for reason and faith. Don’t let this “debate” be dominated by false ideas and abhorrent policies. Stand up, take the microphone, and show what Loudoun’s real values are.

[Update] – If you think this courthouse displays hearing isn’t a political setup by the Right, consider that AG Cuccinelli is making a national issue of it!

Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) writes in a new opinion that local governments do not have to ban holiday displays that include religious symbols, including Jesus Christ.

Cuccinelli’s opinion was a response to a request from Del. Robert G. Marshall (R-Prince William), who asked whether Loudoun County, under the U.S. and Virginia constitutions and state law law, must prohibit holiday displays on public property. – The Washington Post

And I love how a Delegate from Prince William County and an AG from Fairfax is sticking their nose in Loudoun’s business. I guess that makes PWC’s anti-migrant policies fair game for Loudoun to criticize.

Progress is a continuum, not a light switch.

I still want a public option.

I still want us to leave Iraq, and Afghanistan.

I still want cramdown, and the formalization of the short sale process.

I still want gays to be able to serve openly in the military, and get married.

I still want the wealthy to pay their fair share.  

For that matter, I still want riparian buffers.

The fact that I still want these things does not mean that I do not revel in that which has already been accomplished. I’d rather have a lead after the first two months of the baseball season than be behind, but I understand that there’s a lot more baseball to play, even with that lead. So, too, with politics and government. Just because we have gotten so much done doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot more to do. It just means that we’re better off for having done what we have so far.

But neither does it mean that we are done with the issues on which we have already legislated. Throughout US history, Congresses and Presidents have returned to issues after their first attempts showed more was needed:

• At the beginning of our Republic, passage of the Constitution was not sufficient without the further addition of the Bill of Rights.
• After the Civil War, passage of the 13th Amendment was proven to be insufficient to guarantee the rights of all our citizens, and we passed the 14th Amendment to rectify those deficiencies.
• In the first 100 days of the New Deal, dozens of great pieces of legislation were passed. In the following eight years, modifying legislation was passed dozens more times to adjust and improve on the original ideas.
• During the fight for Civil Rights in the 1960s, the Civil Rights Act was shown to be insufficient, and the Voting Rights Act followed shortly thereafter.

So, too, with the major issues that face us today. From health care reform to financial reform to re-examining our military challenges in the face of a new world, our first steps in reform will not be our last. We must, and we will, return to these questions to address the unforeseen needs and limitations of what has already been done.This is why I get frustrated with the idea that we should give up in disgust because everything isn’t fixed already. This is why I get frustrated when people I talk to ask why they should help when all their work so far has been for naught.

Who said this was going to be easy? Who ever said that electing the first black President and giving him a Democratic Congress would actually be anything other than the first step in fixing the raging cluster of problems left by the previous administration?

‘Tis surprising to see how rapidly a panic will sometimes run through a country. All nations and ages have been subject to them. Britain has trembled like an ague at the report of a French fleet of flat-bottomed boats; and in the fourteenth [fifteenth] century the whole English army, after ravaging the kingdom of France, was driven back like men petrified with fear; and this brave exploit was performed by a few broken forces collected and headed by a woman, Joan of Arc. Would that heaven might inspire some Jersey maid to spirit up her countrymen, and save her fair fellow sufferers from ravage and ravishment! Yet panics, in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind soon grows through them, and acquires a firmer habit than before. But their peculiar advantage is, that they are the touchstones of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, which might otherwise have lain forever undiscovered. In fact, they have the same effect on secret traitors, which an imaginary apparition would have upon a private murderer. They sift out the hidden thoughts of man, and hold them up in public to the world. Many a disguised Tory has lately shown his head, that shall penitentially solemnize with curses the day on which Howe arrived upon the Delaware. – The Crisis, Thomas Paine

What will this “panic” show of us? What things and people will be brought to light? We have seen what has been brought to light on the other side, hate, bigotry, ignorance, fear and irrationality. What about on our side? Will we provide inspiration, discipline and persistence in the face of these challenges? I believe we can. I believe we will.

Progress is a process, a journey, a constant struggle against the forces of regression, fear, and division. It requires commitment and continuity. It involves steps backwards as well as leaps forward. It is hard. It is always hard.

We are the Party. Not the President, not Congress members, us. The Party is what we make of it. The fight is never done, and the party is not perfect – no human institution is – but it’s what we have, and it’s what we make of it. Just as America isn’t perfect, but we’re working towards an ever-more perfect union. Our Democratic party isn’t perfect. It’s flawed and it’s scared, and it needs our help to stay true to its bearings. But isn’t that kinda the point of being involved in the first place?

President Obama said we are the change, remember? That doesn’t end with an election, the election is only where it starts. – Paradox13

Revisiting issues many would prefer dispensed with will not be easy, but we will do it. Attacking the next challenge will not be easy, but we will do it. But to do it we must remember that it’s “we” who do these things. Not “them.” Not our elected officials alone, our President alone, but our leaders in concert with us, and more often than not our leaders following us.

And that, that is how we continue to move America forward. Yes, we can.

Last week, it was reported that for the first time in three years, the Loudoun County Public Schools failed to make “Adequate Yearly Progress” in student achievement. AYP is the standard prescribed by the No Child Left Behind Act for measuring school quality.

The results of Virginia’s Standard of Learning tests for 2010 are in, and Loudoun County Public Schools students posted an increase in scores across the board, however the school system did not make Adequate Yearly Progress as defined by the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

The school system was not alone, as 91 percent of all school districts in the state failed to make AYP under the federal guidelines. Only 12 districts across the state reached that achievement, down from 60 in the previous year. LCPS attained AYP in both 2008 and 2009.

Loudoun students passed the English and mathematics portion of the tests at rates of 94 and 91 percent, respectively. In total, 66 percent of Loudoun’s schools made AYP.

AYP is measured by the test scores of 29 different ethnic and socioeconomic subgroups, and in 2010 the tests were measured for every grade from third through eighth, and as final course tests in high school.

Altogether there were more than 2,100 test cells in LCPS, of which only 63, or 2.94 percent, were deemed as not making AYP. – Leesburg Today

Said another way, 97.06 percent of Loudoun’s measured student cohorts passed the standards of learning. That’s an A by most standards. Not however, by the standards of No Child Left Behind. A test which the vast majority fails says more about the test than the people taking it. Tests need to be scaled to measure actionable differences in performance, and the testing results that No Child Left Behind reports provide none of those. All that we hear is that “Loudoun’s Schools Fail” and we are left with the impression that our rather incredible school system is a boondoggle.

No Child Left Behind is not designed to help student achievement, but to undermine the very idea of public education over the long term. It was designed, in fact, to get to the point where no public school could pass, and therefore serve as a false indictment of public education as a whole.  No Child Left Behind was passed with great fanfare in 2002. Since then, it has ratcheted up the standard, and pressure, for schools to be considered “of quality.” In every year, like some kind of educational Moore’s Law, every school is expected to improve the performance of every student as measured by state-mandated tests. In a perverse flipping of incentives, this has led to widespread cheating on the relevant test not by the students, but by the schools themselves! The image to the right is of test papers with identical answers from the Norfolk public schools. That kind of cheating is generally impossible without the consent, if not direct assistance, of the teacher and school.

There are other examples.

At Richmond’s Oak Grove Elementary School, investigators found the principal had directed teachers to fill in students’ answer sheets, often changing wrong responses.

At Accomack County’s Nandua High School, teachers received copied test booklets containing questions that hadn’t yet been retired from use on SOL exams.

Both divisions brought actions against the principals’ teaching licenses, and the state board suspended their administration endorsements in 2006. The former Oak Grove principal will be able to regain hers in 2011.

The only other time the state board took such action was in 2007, when a Carroll County teacher voluntarily surrendered her license after, among other things, allegedly giving students a “thumbs up” sign when they marked correct answers.

In September 2005, the board unanimously voted to withhold accreditation from the Richmond school and the Accomack school for the 2005-06 year. It is the only time the board has done so for a full year.

The state board’s powers to withhold accreditation for testing violations and to initiate investigations into testing problems were written into state codes in 2006.

Two years later, the board approved a policy allowing the state to withhold or deny a school’s ratings under the federal No Child Left Behind law until corrective actions are taken.

State Superintendent Wright said that when it comes to licensure, the state board depends on school divisions to compile evidence of an educator’s wrongdoing.

“It is not as simple as me saying, ‘OK, the teacher violated the test security, so I’m going to recommend to the board that they revoke the license,’ ” she said.

The other laws aren’t intended to penalize, Wright said. – PilotOnline.com

So No Child Left Behind creates incentives for schools to cheat. This undermines the essential mission of the schools while, at the same time purporting to validate that mission. And in creating impossible standards that can only be failed or passed by cheating the very idea of public education itself can be called into question. It’s a wonderfully neat little conservative trick.

Of course, that trick did not fool the people actually involved in schools directly. Teachers, students and many parents have opposed make-or-break testing as a part of No Child Left Behind from the beginning. Of course, no one wants to listen to teachers, students and parents. After all, it’s not like there are teachers, parents or students in Congress. No, seriously. No one in Congress is a student, very few members of Congress even have small children (a point that Krystal Ball makes in her campaign to serve the citizens of VA-01), and you can bet that very few of their children attend public schools.

Under these circumstances, it is remarkable that lawmakers feel they have the expertise to legislate such things as mandatory, annual, escalating testing requirements in the face of fierce opposition by people on the ground in education. It isn’t like other industries are regulated with as much fiat. Compared with what No Child Left Behind did to public education, what the Health Care Reform act or the Financial Reform act did was peanuts for those industries.

Perhaps that’s because there is no “public education” industry, in the sense of an economic organization that generates profit that can then be used to influence policy. Unlike, say, the private education industry, which has benefited mightily from the image of “failing public schools.” It is interesting, if not suspicious, that so much public money has flowed from public schools that have “failed” according to NCLB standards to private (and in some cases, charter) schools that do not have to be measured by the same standards as public schools.

After all, all private and many charter schools can self-select their student populations. Public schools cannot. Public education is a right, private (and charter) education, is not. It is much easier to pass a subjective test if you get to pick and choose the students who take it. Private schools are essentially allowed to pick the students most likely to pass to attend their classes, and viola, they “succeed.” But there’s a funny thing when that happens, the students who did not get the chance to attend the private or charter school, for reasons of money, maturity, or geography are left behind.

No Child Left Behind is designed to leave the kids that need the most help behind!

Even in a system designed to demonstrate failure, we will be remiss if we do not think of the kids who did not not make Adequate Yearly Progress. The kids who “failed.” National policy has individual consequences. For all its serious flaws, No Child Left Behind put in place a mechanism, testing, for identifying the kids who need the most help. It is one thing to use a test to identify a baseline of achievement from which to progress. It is another thing entirely to use a test to declare an entire school a failure.

In Loudoun, for those 63 cells of students that did not make Adequate Yearly Progress, Loudoun’s schools did fail. For any number of reasons, those students did not improve their critical skills sufficiently year-to-year. We will all benefit if those students can see their achievement improve next year. However, we must ask ourselves what the cost of that fix will be, and whether we are willing to pay it.

I strongly believe in public education. Without it, my worldview would be narrower and my life more full of ignorance. I, for one, am willing to pay more for schools and for the resources necessary to advance the 2.94% who were left behind, but are others? What if it will cost Loudoun an additional 30% in school funding to reduce that fail rate to 1%? Are we willing to pay that? Are we willing to raise our property taxes or cut money from parks and police to narrow that gap?

And if the answer is “no” then what is the failure of Adequate Yearly Progress actually measuring? Is it measuring the effectiveness of schools who have to compete for limited resources in the worst governmental budget cycle in a generation? Or is it measuring the political will of the electorate? Is it measuring our willingness to say “97.04% is enough.” And if that is the case, why should our schools be labeled as failing, when they have done everything that we, the public, have asked of them given the limits that we, the public, have placed on them?

Just like a student who gets an answer wrong and still gets an A, the A does not mean that the questions that student got wrong were any less wrong, it just means they got a hell of a lot more questions right. So, too, with Loudoun’s schools, where the teachers and students get a hell of a lot more right than wrong, and that should be the headline.  

Loudoun County Traffic reports on major road closures scheduled for Leesburg tomorrow and Tuesday.

Tomorrow (Monday) and Tuesday, (August 23-24) motorists can expect major traffic delays in the vicinity of the Dulles Greenway, Route 7 and Route 15 in Leesburg, according to the Virginia Department of Transportation. Traffic will be stopped for up to 15 minutes at a time while Dominion Virginia Power crews continue pulling wires across roadways for the new power line. – Loudoun County Traffic

Route 7, Route 15 and the Bypass will all be affected, click over to Loudoun County Traffic for details.

Remember Link from the original NES Zelda games? He was awesome.

What do you want to bet that the same kind of people protesting the so-called “Ground-Zero Mosque” are the same type of people I saw in the fall/winter 2001 smiling in vacation photos while posing in front of the smoking ruins of the WTC. – Constantino Tobio

• Crime (Sex) and Punishment (Stoning) – In a recent conversation about cultural divides, a friend told me that the gulf between the West and the Mideast over women is unbridgeable. I pray that he is wrong.
• Some Things Are Simply Not Negotiable – TeacherKen is a fantastic Virginia blogger who teaches US Government to high school students. In this post, written from the heart, he is uncommonly brief, and to that all the more powerful. Go. Read.
• Epic Traffic Jam Enters Its 9th Day – No baloney. There’s Houston traffic, L.A. traffic, D.C. traffic…and then there’s Beijing traffic.
• Scott Adams Tries to Build a Green House – Fascinating story of how the Dilbert creator tried to build an eco-friendly house, and ran into reality in the process.
• “Hookups” Can Turn Into Meaningful Relationships, Study Suggests – Basically, some people aren’t interested in relationships, but date anyway. That skews the data. Interesting read.
• Unemployment Remains High Because People Keep Blowing Their Job Interviews – The Onion, of course. But satire at its best.
• Henry Adams, Fellow Virginian – UVA Dean Meredith Woo reflects on esteemed American historian Henry Adams.
• A Letter To My Students – Shared by Dave Poisson’s former campaign manager, this letter from a Berkeley professor to his students is a remarkable summary of the intergenerational me-firstism that has led to California’s mess, and an illustration of the consequences of the kinds of policies that Richmond is pursuing today.
• Delegate Al Pollard: “Dear Delegate Gilbert” – An “upstream/downstream” discussion about Chesapeake Bay water quality is worth reading here in Loudoun considering the kerfuffle over the proposed Bay Act regulations earlier this year.
• Bush Campaign Chief and former RNC Chair Ken Mehlman is Gay – You probably saw this, but another senior Bush-era Republican came out as gay. Good for Ken to come out at all, that couldn’t have been easy.
• Devalued Homes Anchor Prospective Job Seekers – Yet another consequence of the craptastic mortgage mess, a less flexible labor market.
  

The flooding has affected millions. It is “a tsunami in slow motion.”

Help is desperately needed.

Our Congressional candidate, Jeff Barnett, is holding Town Halls in Ashburn and Leesburg on Tuesday, August 24th and Wednesday, August 25th, respectively. The Ashburn event will be held at the Ashburn Library. The Leesburg event is scheduled to be held at the Balch Library.

Frank Wolf has agreed to one debate and one forum, but that’s not nearly enough. That’s why I’m putting together ten town hall meetings. 10th District residents deserve the opportunity to question their candidates on the issues they are most concerned about and to hear opposing views” said Jeff Barnett. “It’s disappointing that Frank Wolf is ducking the tough issues by refusing to debate me in more than one place, but these town hall meetings will allow voters to hear from at least one of their candidates directly,” Barnett continued. “I look forward to an open exchange of ideas about our future.

Everyone who comes has an opportunity to meet and talk with our candidate in person, and speaking from my own experience, Jeff enjoys having in-depth discussions with his neighbors here in the 10th District about our future. I strongly encourage everyone to come out and spend some time talking with Jeff. It is great to know that in November, we’ll be voting for someone: Jeff Barnett.

Crossposted at Equality Loudoun

“Tolerance” is one of those mealy-mouth words that gets tossed around, often, it seems, as a strategy for avoiding something that really needs to be said. Let’s just be clear: Some things should never be tolerated. The reckless endangerment of children is one of them.A reader suggested to me backchannel that my response to this comment deserved to be a post in its own right. Then we learned that Loudoun’s resident sociopath Eugene has wormed his cynical fundraising circus into the fabricated Jennifer Keeton/Augusta State Univesity “controversy.” As usual, his message is silly, devoid of even the pretense of truthfulness, and – in a closely related detail – intended to extract money from the least intelligent members of our society. We can skip over the rest of it and go straight to this: A supposed interest in “preserving diversity that includes toleration for a strong belief in moral values.”

What is it, exactly, that Eugene “you would have to treat ‘it’ like a normal person” Delgaudio is demanding “toleration” for? Regular readers of this blog will know me to be a fierce advocate of “diversity” that includes people who believe things that do not comport with reality and “toleration” especially for abhorrent ideas, because that is what sets this nation apart from all others. Our First Amendment guarantees the right to express any belief, however offensive, stupid or unhinged it might be. But what the First Amendment does not guarantee is the “right” to access any venue for such expression. There is no First Amendment “right,” for example, to employment as a licensed school counselor if you do not meet the criteria for a license.

When we send our children to public school, we expect that those responsible for their well-being in that setting have met an established standard of competency, and will not do and say things that may do them harm. Do not confuse your right to express an abhorrent (or just plain false) idea with the imaginary “right” to gain access to other people’s children.

@J. Tyler: Yes, there is objective reality, and we humans are engaged in a process of discovering and describing it, inevitably having to discard mistaken beliefs and assumptions along the way. Some things are a matter of opinion, but other things are not. On this we agree. If you meant to convey something else by “Truth is absolute,” I’m sure you’ll let me know.

Counseling is an applied domain within psychology. I don’t know the specifics of the Augusta program, but a Masters level program would typically include some sort of supervised practicum in addition to coursework. The student would be required to demonstrate competency in the actual practice of counseling before they are granted credentials which would allow them to present themselves to employers and the public as having a certain level of knowledge and training. Anyone can hang out a shingle and call themselves a “counselor” with no training or education at all. A particular degree or license is understood to be a guarantee – the responsibility of the program granting the degree – that the individual has certain skills and competencies. To grant credentials to someone who has failed to demonstrate the required competencies would be a breach of that responsibility. Ms. Keeton, in the judgement of her professors, has failed to demonstrate the required competency in counseling a segment of the student population she is sure to encounter professionally. Therefore, allowing her to have contact with these children in the role of a counselor would be endangerment.

Imagine if a child coming to terms with an intersex condition were sent to her. Ms. Keeton simply believes (she says) that people “were created male and female,” end of story, all she needs to know about the subject. She dismisses all of the medical knowledge concerning neurological development and gender identity in favor of her belief. She is, in other words, actively denying reality – but you seem to think she should be in a position in which she is assumed to have knowledge about this area of life, but in which she would likely tell this vulnerable child something that is completely false and harmful.

As to the responsibility of her professors to convince her that her beliefs in the area of human sexuality are without foundation, I can only say that they obviously are trying. Why else would they have offered her additional training? The fact is that she rejected this offer. The fault lies neither with the professors nor with the evidence presented. Ms. Keeton came to this program with the attitude that she already knows everything she needs to know about human sexuality. If a student has that attitude, first of all, why is she even going to school? Education is an opportunity to learn things you don’t already know. Secondly, if a student has that attitude she is, by definition, unconvinced by empirical evidence. She has come to class with the intention of dismissing information that contradicts her beliefs, something for which her professors can hardly be held accountable.

The Augusta program is doing the responsible thing by preventing this young woman’s willful ignorance from endangering other people’s children. She has no right to do that, and shame on anyone who would try to invent such a “right.”

In the case of Eugene, this is just one more example of an amoral, fake “Christian” putting his own selfish desires before the well-being of the most vulnerable children in our community, as he did when attempting to block the collection of bullying data. He doesn’t care who gets hurt, as long as the checks keep coming. It is beneath contempt.

Kudos to Augusta State for insisting that basic professional standards based on scientific consensus are not to be thrown out in order to accommodate a student’s personal beliefs. And please get in touch with PFLAG and GLSEN to see how you can help make schools safer for all kids.

Loudoun Progress is, indeed, moving forward. You will see some aesthetic and admin-type changes coming in the next few weeks.

Stay tuned!

So says The Washington Post:

Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) will announce Thursday that Virginia’s final 2010 budget surplus will be about $400 million, almost twice the previous estimate, state officials said.

About $229 million comes from tax collections. The remainder comes from unspent balances.

Wow! It’s amazing!! In this economy, we’re running a $400 million surplus!! Thank goodness we elected those fiscally responsible Republicans!!

(wow, that was hard to type)

But then you dig a little deeper and look at the details.

As part of the budget earlier this year, the General Assembly and the governor managed to “balance” the budget by skipping payments to the Virginia Retirement System to the tune of $620 million. Government entities will have to pay it back at some point with interest.

And here we get to the truth of the matter. Those “fiscally responsible Republicans” are balancing the state budget on the backs of public employees. All the bitching and moaning Republicans do about pushing off public debt to our granchildren, and they take the same approach? You hypocritical bastards.

Using the money that was supposed to go to public employees’ pension funds and claiming that the budget is not just in balance, but running a surplus? Enron played with their employees’ pensions, made their company look in better financial shape than it really was, and people went to prison for it.

And now, we’re on the hook for a future payment of over $600 million (plus interest). How in the world is this fiscally responsible? And the so-called “liberal, mainstream media” (I’m looking at you, Washington Post) doesn’t even bother to point this out?

Governor McDonnell, you need to be held personally responsible for this Ponzi scheme that you are pulling on the Commonwealth of Virginia.

(h/t to Lowell at Blue Virginia for the link to Doug Mataconis’ blog.)