Tag Archives: BoS

Equal Justice Under the Law – Unless You’re Gay

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Our Governor is not the worst homophobe in America but he is a contender.

Our Commonwealth is not the worst in its intolerance of gays but it’s got nothing to be proud of either.

In Loudoun County, we have a Board of Supervisors indifferent to the fact that one of its members, Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio, is a gay bashing demagogue.

I wrote each member of the Board of Supervisors to ask them to disavow this bigotry.  Our Board has no shame in its silence. As that old 60s tune went, “Hello Darkness my old friend.”  Janet Clarke wrote she felt no obligation to respond at all.  And she didn’t.  By their silence, may we know them. Continue reading →

Blood Lust

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If there were no guns in the house, a drunk 16 year old would have been taken home by the Sheriff’s Department. No one would be DEAD.

The quote above, by KathleenVS, is a response to ugly comments on the shooting death of Caleb A. Gordley, a sixteen year old Park View High School junior. Her comment isn’t a debate argument. It is a fact.

The facts of the tragedy are less clear. Donald West Wilder, a Sterling Volunteer Fire Company veteran allegedly fired a warning shot, and when Caleb passed him in the stairwell and walked down the hall, Wilder “discharged his firearm several times,” shooting him in the back. Was Mr. Wilder protecting other members of the household from a youth who was so inebriated that he didn’t notice a stranger shooting at him? Sheriff Chapman confirmed that Gordley had no criminal intent when entering the home.

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Who Cares for the Ill in America?

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I was Republican Senator Orrin Hatch’s special counsel when he was chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources; I was especially proud to hear Hatch’s statement last June commending the states to participate in the expansion of Medicaid, to cover adults earning 138 percent of the poverty level, thus providing needed health care for those who were ill who couldn’t afford to care for themselves.

An income level of 138 percent works out to about $14,856 for an individual and $30,656 for a family of four. Compare those levels to your income and expenses, and those you may know who could be helped by this legislation.

In Virginia, this provision would cover 400,000 more Virginians, create 30,000 more jobs, bring $21 billion in federal funding over several years into our state.

Democratic Congressman Gerry Connolly, in neighboring Fairfax County, put it this way, if we opt in, our state shall receive “$17 in federal funds for every state dollar it spends on its Medicaid expansion program.” Continue reading →

No more endearing hugs. Darn.

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In light of yesterday’s WaPo story by Caitlin Gibson, I think it’s safe to say that the lovefest between Scott York and Eugene Delgaudio has indeed run its course.

[Delgaudio attorney Charlie King] is probably just drinking the same clown juice that Delgaudio is, because I have no idea what the heck he’s talking about,

said York in response to King’s statement. In that statement, distributed to the media after the board unanimously stripped Delgaudio of his standing committee appointments at its first 2013 business meeting, King tries to suggest that this is all about York, that York has a “pattern” of alleging misconduct, ignoring the fact that Mr. Delgaudio is the subject of a criminal investigation.

A divorce settlement is pending, we hear.

As many have pointed out since the investigation began, and long before it was handed over to the special prosecutor, it is standard procedure to place an individual under investigation on suspension pending resolution of the matter. At the very least, Real Advocate and others argued, Mr. Delgaudio should be barred from shaping revisions to the county’s aide policies. Supervisor Williams attempted to call for stripping Mr. Delgaudio of these duties back in November, but was thwarted by York, allowing him to participate in the Finance, Government Services and Operations Committee making those revisions. Now it appears that York is the sole target of Mr. Delgaudio’s wrath, at least publicly.

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BoS preparing to throw Delgaudio overboard?

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Update (Jan. 3): Mr. Delgaudio’s attorney has released a statement purporting to explain the board’s 8-0-1 (Clarke absent) vote to strip him of his committee appointments. King asserts that Delgaudio “voted for the committee assignments to avoid embroiling the entire Board in another controversy.” In light of Mr. Delgaudio’s conduct since taking office in 1999, this statement should cause us all to collapse upon the floor in a great heaving orgy of mirth (don’t worry, Barbara! We’re fine!). King also feels it’s “unfortunate” that the Chairman used the board’s regular Rules of Procedures in their customary fashion for making appointments in a new term, and would prefer that the board instead “pass a resolution, establish a committee, conduct an investigation and, if necessary, hold a hearing,” which wouldn’t embroil the entire board in another controversy at all.

Two observations: One, an internal investigation and hearing is what was suspended when evidence of criminal misconduct was “discovered” by York in the documents he had been holding in secret since March, and the investigation was turned over to the appropriate law enforcement agency. Two, King’s statement is carefully worded to hold just the Chairman responsible for the vote, as if the other supervisors couldn’t have withheld their approval. Does this mean we won’t be seeing any more hugs?

BoS preparing to throw Delgaudio overboard?

That’s one interpretation of today’s news, that the reorganization of the Board of Supervisors for 2013 has left the suddenly and curiously silent Mr. Delgaudio with no, count them, zero committee appointments. Now is that any way to treat a comrade you like and respect? Real Advocate speculates:

Perhaps the spectacle of his combative participation in the November 20 Finance, Government Services and Operations Committee meeting made everyone a bit uncomfortable. During that meeting, Delgaudio loudly objected to proposed changes to the board’s policy prohibiting the use of county aides in their Supervisor’s campaign or private business, the very activities for which he is being investigated.

Very loudly, as is his habit when trying to get attention. If you’ve never witnessed his voice rising in contrived petulant outrage, you’re really missing out. Here, he’s responding to a proposed revision that Supervisor Buona characterizes as “standard, and mirrors what I’ve seen in many other HR policies.” I’m afraid the transcript doesn’t really do this justice:

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Gun control or thought control?

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Pastor Doug Giles, Townhall columnist, and all-around "good guy"

 

“No one is willing to believe that adults too, like children, wander about this earth in a daze and, like children, do not know where they come from or where they are going…and are as thoroughly governed as they are by biscuits and cake and the rod.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “The Sorrows of Young Werther”

If Goethe were alive today, he might replace “biscuits and cake and the rod” with “guns and ammo and mental illness.” Wayne LaPierre, head of the NRA, wants taxpayers to fund a “national database of these lunatics,” because “good guys” need biscuits assault weapons and cake thirty-round clips. In addition to blaming the government for letting “these lunatics” out of the nuthouse, the innocent little LaPierre blames the video game makers (who market the guns and ammo he so adores) for gun carnage. The NRA isn’t likely to change their name to the “National Rifle and Friends of Mental Health Association” any time soon. Here’s what LaPierre said about mental health in a Meet the Press interview:

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Mr. Trump, some restrictions apply

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I have a t-shirt with a modified Virginia tourism slogan. It says:

Virginia is for lovers*

*some restrictions apply

The slogan refers to the 2006 anti-marriage amendment, an amendment that applies to my family, but doesn’t apply to Donald Trump. Trump’s traditional, one-man, one-woman* (*at a time) serial marriage is a-ok. As a matter of fact, as he gets older, saggier and richer, his current wife gets younger and more super-model-like-unattainable, and that’s just dandy.

Well, on more important matters, Supervisor Volpe is putting Trump in his place. He can get away with basically anything in his “married” life, but he can’t rename Lowes Island Boulevard. Supervisor Volpe explains in her latest email, emphasis mine.

I have personally met with representatives of Trump National Golf Club to discuss their desire to change Lowes Island Boulevard to Trump Boulevard. In June, I informed the Cascades HOA Board of Directors and the Community Manager about this inquiry and stated that I do not support the name change.

Good for you Supervisor Volpe. Trump can cut down all the trees he wants and use any chemical he wants on his expansive “gentleman’s lawn”, but leave the name of that damn street alone. We’ve got to draw the line somewhere, or the corporate moneybags like the Washington football team will think they can get away with anything.

Actually, they can, so long as “anything” is opposed by “land-use freaks“, an endearing term coined by Reform Commissioner Bob Gordon. But, hey, a line in the sand is better than no line. At least Loudoun has symbolic boundary between citizens and unadulterated corporatism. Thank you Supervisor Volpe. Now Loudoun has a slogan that would do the BoS and their fellow winners of the “contest of ideas” proud:

Loudoun is for privatization*

*some restrictions apply

Let Tom talk

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Tom Seeman and "S." Mann at the Feb 2011 "LEC" protest. Note: This image has been altered to obscure the back of "S." Mann's head at the request of "S." Mann." She has also requested that we only refer to her as "S." Mann, which we confess to finding hilarious.

I don’t know both sides of the story. I read a letter from LCRC activist Tom Seeman. He attended the July 12 LCDC meeting and reported that Evan MacBeth, chairman of the LCDC asked him to lead the “Pledge of Allegiance” and then booted him out of the meeting. Supposedly, MacBeth called an “executive session” and asked all “non-LCDC and non-Democrats” to leave. Tom was the only person to oblige.

Excuse me, but what’s a “non-Democrat?” Is there a genetic test, ideological test or litmus test? Is Tony Hall, the Democrat who co-authored an anti-gay call for “Christian” insurrection against teh ghay a Democrat? Is there a Democratic equivalent of a Rhino? If Evan did what Seeman says, I’d bet you a dollar that quite a few LCDC members did not approve of the action. Democrats have little political power against the all Republican BoS. Their most potent tool is exposure, and that requires transparency. If the Democrats are going to demand transparency, they’d better practice it, right?

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I can’t quite figure out why this seems so familiar…can you help?

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In the thread below, A.E. Gnat shared a link to a recent “Public Advocate” video for our amusement. Yawn.

Wait. Wait. They have bags over their heads. Hmmm. What other groups demonstrate in public with bags over their heads because the viewpoint they are expressing is so odious, so execrable and shameful, that they wish to conceal their identities? Let me see… LOLOL. Thanks, A.E.

Hate group "Public Advocate" led in song by Loudoun supervisor Eugene Delgaudio. I wonder if the hood idea is copyrighted?

Nervous Nellie

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Eugene Delgaudio, B.J. Bluth, ?? and Rose Ellen Ray campaigning for pollution in 2011

That’s how Eugene Delgaudio sounded in a July 12 WJLA interview. Reporter Ben Eisler asked how Delgaudio’s “group” got its hands on a New Jersey engagement photo that he used in an anti-gay Colorado campaign mailer:

Delgaudio: “Other people take copies of our photographs since we’re non-profit and they do share them around and that’s how things get around.”

Eisler: “Does it concern you at all?”

Delgaudio: “The fact that I have to look into it is not a problem.”

Eisler: “Does it concern you at all that this was found in your literature?”

Delgaudio: I’M LOOKING INTO IT!”

Delgaudio was literally yelling at Ben. He was very perturbed. Usually he reserves the ALL CAPS for his anti-gay rants, and rarely talks about himself except as a phony victim of a phony “attack” by some “other.”

He’s seemed nervous for a while now. At the May public hearing, Lydia from the NoVA Atheists confronted him about the recent SPLC designation of his “Public Advocate” as a hate group. He squirmed and inappropriately mouthed responses. His behavior was out of sorts, unlike his usual confident disdain. After the hearing, I asked if everything was okay with him, and he responded “life is good.” The nervous Nellie then nervously dismissed me. He was really nervous.

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