Open source, procurement, and gov tech.
I started a job with the White House about two and a half weeks ago. (For you federal government geeks, it’s via an assignment from the GSA, which in turn is via an IPA from UVA.) The plan is to take the train up to D.C. once a week, and work in Charlottesville for the …
Continue reading “My new job and its effect on my blogging.”
Looking over races in central Virginia, I sure see a lot of incumbents going unchallenged. If they were hit by a bus in the weeks or months before election day, the opposing party would have no chance of getting their own guy elected, because they decided to sit it out. My own representatives in the …
Continue reading “Let’s run party leaders in unopposed races.”
From Rep. Robert Hurt’s e-mail newsletter today: Last week I also visited with the owner of an auto repair shop in Appomattox. He told me that he first started his business back in 1987. Back then, he was able to get his business up and running in one day. One day was all it took …
Continue reading “Hurt: It takes 150 times longer to start a business now than in 1987.”
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?”
I’m wondering what to do with the news that the Federal Highway Administration has provided preliminary approval for Virginia to toll I-95. There’s so much that I don’t know about transportation funding. Here’s some of what I’d like to know: The funding from this can only go to 95, right? How much of the cost …
Continue reading “Some of the questions raised by the approval to toll I-95.”
Remember last week, when George Allen criticized Tim Kaine for raising money out of state? Well, today George Allen was at a fundraiser in Newport Beach, California. That took exactly one week. It was a dumb-ass criticism from Allen in the first place. He got burned making the same criticism of Webb in 2006, and …
Continue reading “It only took Allen a week to prove himself a hypocrite.”
From the Daily Progress, covering George Allen getting a haircut at my barber today (seriously): Allen criticized Kaine for his spending time with Obama in Chicago, rather than campaigning in Virginia. “While I’m here in Charlottesville, at Staples Barber Shop, he’s up in Chicago with President Obama’s big money bundlers, in Chicago, and I’d rather …
Connie Brennan announcing her 2007 campaign. Good news for my friend Connie Brennan: a conservative independent has become the third candidate in the race in the 59th House of Delegates district, which will surely split the vote on the right. This is the race for Watkins Abbitt’s seat, the conservative Democrat-turned-independent (caucusing with Republicans) who …
Continue reading “An independent has joined the 59th House race.”
The post-debt-ceiling poll numbers are in, and they’re not good for Republicans. A CNN poll released today finds the Republican Party is down to a 33% approval rating, vs. a 47% approval rating for the Democratic Party. Speaker John Boehner’s approval rating has dropped ten points in the past three weeks, down to 33%, while …
Continue reading “Congressmen are upside-down in a new CNN poll.”
I mentioned in June that I’d gotten an award from the White House. Now they’re promoting it on their website. On the “Champions of Change” site—that’s the award that I got—they’re featuring the sixteen of us who received awards on that occasion, all in the realm of open data technology. I was in awfully good …