Open source, procurement, and gov tech.
When a candidate is described as “divisive,” generally it’s intended to mean that while his own party loves him, the other party can’t stand him. In what’s shaping up to be a race between Terry McAuliffe and Ken Cuccinelli for the Virginia governorship, there are two wildly divisive candidates who are perhaps more divisive within …
Continue reading “Neither Cuccinelli nor McAuliffe can win. And yet one of them must.”
Frederick Kunkle had a tough-to-read article about Sen. Creigh Deeds in yesterday’s Washington Post. For those of us who have gotten to know him in the nine years since he ascended to the senate, there’s a lot in here that’s sad. Losing an election is tough, and the easy thing to do afterwards is to …
Continue reading “The Post profiles Creigh Deeds post-election.”
During last fall’s election, former BET owner Sheila Johnson endorsed Bob McDonnell because she despises Creigh Deeds, on a personal level. What the backstory is there, I have no idea. But for her, this was personal. So I really got a kick out of seeing Johnson get all upset at McDonnell for his Confederate History …
Continue reading “Sheila Johnson just can’t be surprised by McDonnell.”
Can we all agree that the notion of either gubernatorial candidate being a “jobs governor” (as McDonnell has branded himself) is fundamentally bullshit? A governor has a very limited capacity to create jobs. I will buy that it’s possible that a governor, over the course of four years, can woo a couple of big employers …
Bob McDonnell just doesn’t think that people have anything to do with global climate change, and the AP’s Bob Lewis asked him some hard questions about it. Climate scientists are unanimous: the temperature is going up, and human are doing it. But McDonnell says he merely “thinks” that global climate change is real, but says …
Continue reading “McDonnell doubts global climate change exists at all.“
Shorter Bob McDonnell: I believe nothing that I said I believed. Except for that business about being able to fire queers. That I’m totally down with. But it has nothing to do with when I said that in my thesis, for reasons I can’t explain. Some of my best friends are sodomites. Look, a blimp! …
FactCheck.org: Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell’s new ad claims that Democrat Creigh Deeds’ policies would bring $7,800 in higher taxes over four years for Virginia households. The ad would be devastating, if it were true. Ouch. It’s all downhill from there.
Back in June I was impressed that Bob McDonnell had refused to pledge not to raise taxes. A grownup Republican running for governor! What a relief. But…no. He caved when I wasn’t looking: Deeds’s Republican opponent, former attorney general Robert F. McDonnell, repeated his pledge not to raise taxes for roads or anything else. Lame. …
Continue reading “McDonnell caved on this business of a no-tax pledge.”
A trend has emerged in the last couple of poll results: Sen. Creigh Deeds is pulling even with Bob McDonnell. Clarus research group’s poll came out a few days ago, showing McDonnell 5% ahead of Deeds, much closer than Deeds had been. But who is Clarus? I have no idea. So I ignored it. But …
Continue reading “Sen. Deeds is pulling even with McDonnell.”
Jim Bacon on both gubernatorial candidates’ promises to slim down the state budget by eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse”: But we’ve been down this road before. Does anybody remember the “Warner commission”? Does anyone recall that Virginia, for all the flaws so manifest to us who live here, has been consistently rated either No. 1 …
Continue reading “Eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse” won’t close our budget gap.”