Open source, procurement, and gov tech.
Sean Connaughton probably won’t sleep very well tonight. A FOIA request reveals that he low-balled the estimate for building Charlottesville’s proposed Western Bypass, which might help explain why he pushed through approval of the thing, getting a four-person majority on the Albemarle Board of Supervisors to hold an unadvertised midnight vote to sign off on …
Continue reading “Did Connaughton lie to the CTB and Albemarle about the Western Bypass price tag?”
We’ve been fostering four little beagle mutts for the past couple of weeks (and puppy-sat their two litter mates last weekend, which was three days of chaos). It’s time for them to go back to the Charlottesville Albemarle SPCA to be altered, and then they go up for adoption. Naturally, I want to promote them …
Del. Rob Bell, quoted in today’s Daily Progress: [W]e can all remember how negative mailings filled with innuendo and personal attacks helped defeat Virgil Goode in 2008. Does anybody have the faintest idea of what he’s talking about? I’m not aware of a single such mailing going out. Rep. Tom Perriello ran a very clean …
Continue reading “Bell accuses Perriello of negative campaigning.”
Delegate Rob Bell is speaking to elementary school students in Albemarle County! Indoctrination! Evil government lecture kids unsuspecting no parental approval badness!!!1111!!!!ELEVEN!!!! Or, y’know, whatever it was that Republicans said when President Obama had the temerity to address school kids a few weeks ago. That.
John Edwards, giving it his all for the 2009 World’s Biggest Bastard award, courtesy of the New York Times: In the proposal, which The New York Times examined, [former Edwards aide Andrew] Young asserts that he assisted the affair by setting up private meetings between Mr. Edwards and [his mistress] Ms. Hunter. He wrote that …
Continue reading ““Don’t be like that, baby. I’ll get you DMB.””
I want to stitch together a few highlights from Brian McNeill’s lengthy profile of local Tea Party chapter head Bill Hay in today’s Daily Progress: “I have a lot of respect for Tom Perriello,” Hay said, taking a break from selling his Righteous Bean coffee at the farmer’s market in Meade Park on a recent …
I’m putting on an event for Left of Center on Tuesday night here in C’ville. It’s about three topics that are important to me: food, local economies, and sustainability. Here’s the description we’re circulating: Tuesday, June 2, 7:00pm at Rapture (Facebook RSVP) Is the local food movement a passing fad for the wealthy, or is …
Continue reading “Is the local food movement a passing fad for the wealthy?”
Left of Center is holding a lieutenant governor candidates forum at Rapture, in Charlottesville, on Wednesday. Mike Signer will be there, with Jon Bowerbank and Jody Wagner’s campaigns sending representatives. Come on out from 7:00 PM—8:30 PM, hear what the campaigns have to say, learn how to get involved, and hoist a beer with some …
Continue reading “Lt. Gov. candidate forum on Wednesday night.”
This weekend I moved Charlottesville Blogs and Virginia Political Blogs from DreamHost to Media Temple, and they’re now approximately a billion times faster, and way more reliable. DreamHost is nice for tiny, low-traffic sites that offer no technical challenges, but most of my sites long ago outgrew them, so I’ll be moving everything over to …
You’ve heard the stories about tent cities springing up around major cities throughout the U.S. We’re not quite at that point in Charlottesville, but with 20% of the city below the poverty line, it’s time for some innovative thinking to tackle this problem. Tomorrow night’s Left of Center forum is on that very topic: The …
Continue reading “Left of Center: Poverty in Charlottesville”