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This fellow built a website to take Oregon's state code off their lousy website and mash it up with lots of goodness, displaying it in a humane way. (Like Richmond Sunlight, but for Oregon, and for laws, not bills.) The result is just great. I've been planning to do this for Virginia's code for a few years now, but haven't had the time. Maybe if I keep not doing it, somebody else will do it for me.
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That's the budget for transportation upgrades just to the shopping center or village or whatever the hell Tysons Corner is. (I've never been there, and don't have the faintest idea.) Bob McDonnell's transportation funding plan for the whole STATE isn't enough to cover the cost of this one project.
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This question was posted to MeFites, and there are a couple of hundred responses, many of which are awfully interesting. It turns out that a sick sense of civic pride compelled many of us to believe that our hometowns, no matter how small, would have been #2 on the Soviets' hit-list come armageddon. Towards the end of the thread, I tossed in my three-point justification for Charlottesville being high on the list.
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It looks like the $15 billion figure may be way off.
I’ve thought of doing a usable site for DC laws, since currently they’re locked up in a horrible unlinkable Westlaw site.
You’re commenting on Virginia’s economy or traffic and have never been to Tysons Corner? That’s like being chair of Virginia tourism and having never been to Monticello or Colonial Williamsburg. Next time you’re in NoVA, call me, I’ll take you there. I’m afraid you’re really not qualified to discuss overall Virginia transportation priorities without at least knowing what Tysons Corner is, what it means to the Virginia economy, and the true traffic hell that swirls around it. I’m kinda, y’know, serious.
No, I don’t work in Tysons, and I don’t have any emotional stake in that part of the globe. It’s just plain silly that you don’t know nothin’ about the biggest (or one of a very short list) economic engine of the state.
The Code of Virginia and the Virginia Administrative Code are already online and easily searchable at leg1.state.va.us. What’s wrong with it as is?
I hope that’s right, KC. If so, that’s my least-favorite method of obfuscating financial data—taking data for many years and claiming that’s the lump sum cost. “Obama’s healthcare plan will cost $100 trillion! (over the next century)” I heard similarly meaningless claims made about Bush’s economy proposals. It’s misleading and unhelpful. I mean, I’m glad to see people thinking long-term, but we can’t just do so about things that we dislike.
Well, no, that’s like commenting on Virginia tourism and never having been to Monticello or Colonial Williamsburg. (Though I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration.) I’m not in charge of anything. :) Some day I’ll visit. I’ve just never had any reason. Plus, I hear the traffic is pretty bad there. ;)
While I agree with Brian that perhaps a visit is in order; be warned; the traffic is a monster of truly incredible proportions. It is faster and easier to add 45 miles to a trip by going around when you want to get from one side to the other. Va route 7 is essentially a parking lot every day until after 9pm.
I used to call Tysons Corners Mall (the first one) a “monument to capitalism” until someone pointed out to me how much the development of the mall had been subsidized by the tax-payer. There are two staggeringly large shopping malls there, and even the low-end mall has the running joke of “no k-mart shoppers allowed” (the stores in both tend to cater to only very wealthy). The Apple store in Tysons 1 was (and is) quite a draw, but as more Apple stores open up with easier access it is less of a big deal.
I used to work off one end of the Tyson’s area (AOL was located at the end of Westwood Center Drive part of the time I worked there) and one of the dance studios I have frequented for years is also off Westwood Center Drive. Sadly, the traffic makes it tough to visit anymore.
I have more recently omitted consideration for well paid jobs because they’d require daily commutes to Tysons area and I just can’t stand that thought.
I grew up near US Air Force bases all over the world; so I got used to the local town thinking it was a cold war missile target; even when the concept was pretty funny to those of us who’d been to far more interesting bases before.
I briefly worked at the Pentagon in the early 1990s and ate lunch at a gazebo in the central courtyard we all called the “ground zero cafe” (I understand that is gone now, the food was pretty horrible anyway).
I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with it, any more than there’s anything wrong with the General Assembly’s website. But I think that it could be significantly more useful than it already is.
When finding an individual law via Google, for instance, you just drop into a page with virtually no navigation (i.e. this) or context. What am I looking at? Is this a law? Is it a law now, or did it used to be? What state? Based on the URL, I guess Virginia, but it doesn’t say…
There’s a lot of context that the state could provide, but doesn’t. For instance, § 18.2-32.2 just passed five years ago. There should be a link to the bill and video of the discussion of the bill on the floor of the legislature. Mashing it up with court records would reveal prosecutions under this statute, or cases in which it has been cited. Mashing it up with legislation that would affect this would let people see what changes have been proposed. Mashing it up with lobbying disclosures would tell people who funded or influenced the passage of this bill.
Because it’s legislation, the wording is precise and technical. Somebody interested in the topic of this bill—”Killing a fetus”—googling for “abortion,” “murder,” “baby,” “unborn child,” etc. wouldn’t find the bill, because it doesn’t use any of those words. So tagging is in order. Mashing it up with Google News would reveal mentions of this legislation in the news. Allowing comments would let people debate the merits of a law, or explain what its intent and effects are.
There’s definitely a whole lot to be done here.
Blacksburg. Yeah. The loose nuke laying somewhere off the surf of Tybee Island, Georgia was lost after a mock bombing run on the Radford Army Arsenal. Apparently the notion was that Ivan would come thundering down from Canada on a great circle route and take out a powder plant in the NRV. I find it more surprising that some General Ripper thought it was sensible to fly into a mock dogfight with a real nuke.
Scott- its still there, but a different set-up, more like a coffee shop now. They added a bunch of benches- its a nice enough spot though- the coffee shop might be gone now though. I haven’t been inside the Pentagon for a year and I heard they were thinking of naking some changes.
It was gospel truth when I was growing up that my hometown–Dayton, Ohio, home of Wright-Patterson AFB–would be the number one target in a nuclear war. We all knew we were doomed, and yes, there was some kind of sick pride in knowing it.