Tag: George Allen

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News

In brief: Robo designated driver, Thanksgiving casualties, Bigfoot erotica and more

Tony will soon be cruising the streets of Crozet. Courtesy Albemarle County

Tony the self-driving shuttle

Perrone Robotics cranked up the driverless vehicle heat last week with the awkwardly acronymed Tony—TO Navigate You—which will soon be autonomously tooling around Crozet.

In a partnership with Albemarle County and JAUNT—Jefferson Area UNited Transportation, another awkward acronym—Perrone will test drive the shuttle near its facility in Crozet before it begins an official route in March, and JAUNT will lend its transit expertise.

Albemarle is ponying up $238,000 for the vehicle, Perrone $271,000 and JAUNT $108,000 for insurance and a trained operator, who will be onboard as an “ambassador,” but be prepared to step in if the six-seater needs a real driver.

The fixed route in Crozet has not yet been determined. May we suggest a pub crawl route from Starr Hill Brewery to Crozet Pizza to Pro Re Nata?

Quote of the week

“Quite honestly, if people don’t want a successful governor and a good representative of his constituents to come to speak at the University of Virginia, I don’t give a damn.”—Robert Andrews, chair of UVA’s College Republicans, on hosting George Allen, whose past racial insensitivity—including the infamous 2006 “macaca” moment—drew concern from minority student leadership, the Cav Daily reports

In brief

Councilors want raise

Mayor Nikuyah Walker wants to ask the General Assembly to allow City Council to change its charter and determine its own salaries. Currently councilors make $18,000, and the mayor gets $20,000, which limits who can afford to serve. Council will hold a public hearing at its December 3 meeting.

Toscano not Pelosi-ing

Delegate David Toscano, the Virginia House minority leader, says he’ll resign the leadership position after the 2019 session because it takes too much time. Toscano, 68, has led the Dems since 2011, and says he’ll still seek reelection to the 57th District.

Uninviting Johnny Reb

After a petition to remove another local Confederate monument from Court Square—one that this time falls on county property and is dubbed Johnny Reb—the Albemarle Board of Supervisors has asked for legislation that would allow it to move the statue.

Uninviting Mike Signer

Members of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission want City Councilor Mike Signer off its board after they say he missed their past four meetings. In an email to the Daily Progress, Signer said his 4-year-old twins and other family members have kept him busy, and that councilors frequently miss their engagements. Wrote Signer, “Mayor Walker, for instance, has missed several council meetings this year.”

More Bigfoot jokes

“Saturday Night Live” actor Mikey Day threw on a taupe jacket and colored his hair gray November 17 as he took on the persona of 5th District Representative Denver Riggleman, who’s gotten plenty of national attention for being an alleged “devotee to Bigfoot erotica.” Said Day as Riggleman, “As I’ve said 500 times before, that picture was a joke between buds, and I’m not into that stuff.”

Caregiver con

Former caretaker Tia Daniels will serve three years in jail for stealing over $12,000 worth of heirloom jewelry and money from 98-year-old Albemarle woman Evelyn Goodman. Daniels also duped the elderly woman’s daughter into giving her money for a Habitat for Humanity house by creating fake correspondence with the charity, according to Albemarle Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Tracci.

Deadly Thanksgiving

The Charlottesville Fire Department is hoping to keep holiday cooks across the city from burning their houses down while preparing their turkey and pumpkin pies.

“Thanksgiving is the peak day for home cooking fires,” when nearly four times as many occur than on any other day, according to a press release sent by Battalion Chief Joe Phillips.

Fire crews across the nation respond to an estimated 172,100 cooking-related fires per year, for an average of 471 per day. These easily avoided incinerations have caused an average number of 530 deaths, 5,270 injuries, and $1 billion in property damage each year, according to Phillips.

City firefighters encouraging holiday cooks to keep flammable items like oven mitts and towels away from the stovetop, wear short sleeves or roll up their sleeves while in the kitchen, always have a properly fitting lid nearby to smother flames coming from a pot or pan, and, in the case of an oven fire, turn the heat off and keep the oven door closed so flames don’t spread.

And deep-fried turkeys can be deadly as well. The National Fire Protection Safety Association discourages the use of the hot-oil devices, which it says kills five people, injures 60, and destroys 900 homes a year.

Categories
News

In brief: Constitutional choices, banned from Grounds, $4-million manse and more

The Rivanna River flooded in May and edged near homes in Woolen Mills. Skyclad ap

But wait, there’s more on the ballot

While congressional candidates are getting all the attention, they’re not the only choices that need to be made at the polls November 6. Virginia likes to ask voters to weigh in on additions to its constitution, such as the now-unconstitutional marriage-is-between-a-man-and-a-woman amendment. A repeal of that will not appear on the ballot, but there are two other constitutional amendments for voters to consider on Tuesday.

One expands a property-tax exemption to spouses of service members who were killed or totally disabled in action to allow the spouse—as long as he or she does not remarry—to relocate and still claim the exemption. A “yes” on this amendment means approving the exemption.

The second, more controversial amendment, allows localities to offer property tax breaks to owners who make improvements to flood-prone properties. That means people who put money into protecting their property against rising waters can get a real estate tax break.

Critics say such breaks mean people who don’t live on the water are subsidizing the cost of waterfront living for others, and that they encourage building on flood-prone land. Supporters say the tax relief provides an incentive for owners to make expensive fixes to protect their properties.

A “yes” vote on this amendment means you support allowing localities to offer the property tax break.

Earlier this year, Delegate Steve Landes, who represents western Albemarle, voted against the flood amendment in the House because of concerns about the increasing number of constitutional amendments providing “more and more exemptions from property taxes.” But he says he supports both amendments now, and notes that while the flood amendment allows localities to provide this exemption, “it does not require them to do so.”

Quote of the week

“I don’t need thoughts and prayers—I need change.”—Jordan Bridges, a UVA third-year and president of Jewish Voice for Peace, at an October 27 candlelight vigil for the 11 people shot to death in a Pittsburgh synagogue earlier that day, according to the Cavalier Daily.

In brief

Unite the Right organizer Richard Spencer will not be welcome at his alma mater the next four years. Eze Amos

Banned from UVA

Ten people associated with last year’s August 11 march through Grounds are banned from university property for four years. The list includes alum Richard Spencer, whose wife filed for divorce last week, alleging assault; Elliott Kline, aka Eli Mosley, former Identity Evropa leader in charge of Unite the Right security; former Marine Vasillios Pistolis; the Daily Stormer’s Robert “Azzmador” Ray, and four members of California-based Rise Above Movement arrested in early October.

Fields files charge

James Fields, the man charged with driving his car into a crowd on August 12, 2017, killing one person and injuring many others, was allegedly attacked by another inmate at the local jail earlier this month. Fields filed an assault charge against Timothy Ray Brown Jr, but he showed no physical signs of being beaten up at his October 29 motions hearing,

Too young to drink—and buy handguns

Two UVA students filed a lawsuit challenging a federal ban on the sale of handguns to those under 21 (18-year-olds can legally buy rifles and shotguns, but not handguns). Tanner Hirschfeld, 20, and Natalia Marshall, 18, are suing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, its acting director, Thomas Brandon, and U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, claiming the age limit is unconstitutional.

George Allen’s old house on the block

staff photo

Social Hall, the circa 1814 house once owned by the former Virginia governor and U.S. senator on East Jefferson Street, is for sale for nearly $4 million. Janice Aron bought it in 2006 for $1.1 million, and extensively renovated the 6,500-square-foot manse, which features five bedrooms, a lap pool, and an unparalleled view of Market Street Park and the statue of General Robert E. Lee.

Categories
Opinion

That’s all, folks: Donald Trump wins, and the Odd Dominion turns out the lights

Columnist Dan Catalano says every single person who voted for Trump voted to give a racist, sexist, anti-semitic, narcissistic demagogue the keys to the world’s most powerful democracy. Photo by Amanda Maglione

Just so you know, I had always planned to make this the final edition of the Odd Dominion column. When I first started scribbling this occasionally amusing trifle way back at the dawn of 2007, I assumed that I’d keep writing it until I ran out of jokes, or material, or both. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that, at times, the jokes have been pretty thin, but, as it turns out, the world of Virginia politics is a never-ending cornucopia of ridiculous shenanigans. And so, if I so desired, I could continue to crank out these little pearls of political punditry ad infinitum (and, I’m sure some readers would grumble, ad nauseum). But after nearly a decade of bi-weekly columns, I realized a few months ago that I was running out of steam, and that finding funny and/or insightful things to say about the current state of Virginia politics was getting harder and harder.

And then, of course, there was the Trump problem. Even before the unimaginable, horrific electoral triumph of that carrot-colored cretin, the task of writing about him—and what his success says about the state of American racial and gender politics—was almost too depressing to bear. See, when I started this column all those years ago, its main purpose was to make fun of pols who were as ridiculous as Trump, but nowhere near as duplicitous and dangerous. In fact, the impetus for the entire column was an event—now lost to the sands of political time—involving then-U.S. Representative Virgil Goode, who had written a constituent letter decrying the use of a Quran by newly elected Muslim congressman Keith Ellison during his swearing-in ceremony. “If American citizens don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration,” he warned, hilariously employing the third person, “there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office.”

The letter was obtained and published by C-VILLE’s Erika Howsare, and made some national news, as overt Muslim-bashing by politicians was still considered bad form back then. But here’s the thing: Goode, along with other early Odd Dominion targets such as George “Macaca” Allen and unrelenting ambition machine Eric Cantor, was at best comic relief, and at worst merely symbolic of how darker, nativist strains of political thought get woven into the fabric of our imperfect democracy.

But Trump is different. He is a true monster and a sociopath: an ignorant buffoon who has no driving force save ambition and no moral compass to speak of. I fully realize that his ascendancy to the presidency of the United States was supported by a large minority of American voters, and that many of those voters are hurting economically and feel culturally assailed. I realize this, and I do not care. Every single person who voted for Trump voted to give a racist, sexist, anti-semitic, narcissistic demagogue the keys to the world’s most powerful democracy, and by doing so has debased the very idea of America, and put the future of our great country in peril.

And yes, I got it wrong. I, who always prided myself on my peerless prognosticating ability, was absolutely certain that the country that I love could not possibly put a man as unqualified and destabilizing as Donald J. Trump in the White House. But you know what? I’m not embarrassed or chagrined about getting it wrong. I got it wrong because I believed in the innate goodness of the American people, and trusted in our collective ability to make the right choice, even if we were angry and in pain and felt like lashing out.

This time, however, we couldn’t manage to do that. Next time, I pray that we will. I won’t be around to write about it, but I pray that we will.

Odd Dominion was an unabashedly liberal, twice-monthly op-ed column covering Virginia politics. It was encouraged, crafted and whipped into shape by a truly talented group of journalists and editors, chief among them Cathy Harding, Graelyn Brashear, Lisa Provence and Jessica Luck. Thank you for reading.