I think I am probably the only person that reads this site that this applies too, but there is a special election coming up on December 11th, for VA-1, US Congress. This includes the Fredericksburg area, through the Northern Neck, and on down to Williamsburg and environs. Our Representative, Jo Ann Davis (R), died, kind of unexpectedly, of breast cancer a few months ago. This is the election to replace her.

There are three people running, a Republican, a Democrat, and an Independent. Here are their websites:

Rob Wittman (R)
Philip Forgit (D)
Lucky Narain (I)

Wikipedia on the race

It tends to be pretty conservative here in the 1st District, and most of the competition to Rep. Davis (who had something like a 97% conservative rating) tended to be people who felt she wasn’t conservative enough. Apparently though, there’s at least some money being sunk into the race.

I haven’t seen any road signs or mailings yet, though.

Check this out.

Apparently, in order to vote in the Republican primaries in Virginia next year, voters will be required to sign an oath of loyalty to the eventual nominee. You will swear to vote for whichever Republican wins, according to the story.

Sooooo, say you are pro-life. So you vote for Huckabee or something. But then Giuliani wins the nomination. You’ve sworn to vote for him, even though he is pro-choice. Oops.

The Virginia GOP has had a thing for a while about being afraid people are going to sabotage their primaries. Closing them up was an issue in the last gubernatorial election. Now, they (SBE or GOP? I don’t know) just schedule them the same day to make people choose one party or the other. I guess that’s not enough for them, so now they are demanding oaths of fealty, like it’s the middle ages or something. There’s no way to enforce it, besides honor, but seriously WTF.

Senator Warner has announced that he will not run for re-election next year. A sad day for Virginia.

There goes our last chance of having a Virginian in the White House in 2008. The esteemed Jim Gilmore has dropped out of the race. During his brief candidacy, many people wondered, “why is he even running?” Many more wondered, “who is that guy?”

In any case, it goes to show you that even if some dude sets up a “Draft [your name here]” website on the internet, it doesn’t really mean you should actually run. All it means is that a crazy dude had 10$ to spend on a domain name.

But, for those Gilmore diehards out there, don’t give up hope yet. The speculation is that the only sane reason he was running in the first place is that he wants to raise his profile for a run for Virginia Governor or for the possibly open Senate seat currently inhabited by resident badass John Warner. I’m not quite sure how far his profile has been raised here in July 2007, but hey, I guess it looks good on a resume.

Today is the anniversary of Patrick Henry’s famous speech down there at St. John’s Church in Richmond, VA. You know the one, about the liberty and such. If I had to guess, I might predict that there may be a reenactment or something going on there, although that may simply come from spending too much time living in Williamsburg - I’m not sure how they do things in Richmond. How they roll.

So this is a famous speech, or at least, it is a famous last paragraph of a speech. The whole thing - in its entirety - is pretty short though, and is worth reading. Even without a preconceived burning hatred for the British, it is pretty effective in instilling one, at least to me. You can read it here, if you like: wikisource.

Of course, something to keep in mind while reading that, and something which the wikipedia article does not mention, but which I am fairly certain is, nonetheless, true, is that no one wrote the speech down while he was speaking it, and Henry was not the sort of person to write down his speeches beforehand. So there is probably a degree of creative license, or creative memory there; be warned.

I might be thinking of the Gettysburg Address though?

The title of this post is stolen from the Daily Show book. FYI.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_me_liberty_or_give_me_death

We’ve been having an interesting discussion here about Richmond City’s (possibly) unreasonable minimum monthly water bill. To summarize where we are so far:

• Richmond City residents pay a minimum monthly water bill of 43.55$ regardless of how much water they actually use.
• The average American uses around 400 cubic feet of water a month (supposedly).
• If you use between zero and 10,000 cubic feet of water a month you pay 0.01144$ per cubic foot of water (and 0.01684$ per cubic foot of water water (this is based on how much water you use, not how much is actually waste)).
• If you use between 10,100 and 200,000 cubic feet of water you pay 0.00585$ per cubic foot of water. A savings of 49%.
• Richmond seems to have a much higher minimum monthly water bill than the surrounding counties. Henrico, for instance, has a minimum monthly bill of 26.50$ and that includes 600 cubic feet of water.
• A couple of surrounding counties bill utilities on a bi-monthly schedule. The idea is if you can send out 1.5M less bills each year you can save some cash.

A couple of thoughts that came out of the discussion:

• It seems unjust to charge poor people a (possibly) unreasonable amount for a life necessity.
• Switching to a bi-monthly billing schedule would put an unreasonable strain on poor families, especially in the winter months when gas bills are in the 300$-400$ range per month.
• It might be good to give a “deep discount” to customers who use a small amount of water.
• Perhaps businesses, especially restaurants, depend on the bulk water usage discount. Increasing their rates would ultimately hit our pockets somewhere down the line.
• There is no incentive to conserve water.

Now the question is, “where do we go from here?” Richmond’s Green Party representative, Scott Burger, addressed the City Council about this issue on Monday. I guess a starting point would be to contact your city council representative. A good idea might be to organize a bit and come up with some solutions, or gather some more information.

Also, Burger is offering 100$ cash to anyone that can “find any city in the entire United States that has amore[sic.] regressive minimum water and sewer rate than Richmond’s.” More details after the jump.
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Turns out. If someone is going to mistake me, over here in my Haduken capacities, as a source of press and send me a press release, well, I am going to have to post it.

Apparently, and I expect someone more intelligent than I to read the press release and tell me if this is true or not, Richmond City gives you a discount if you use over 10,000 cubic feet (umm a lot?) of water each month. To subsidize that discount regular folks like you and I pay a minimum water bill of 43.55$. In Hopewell you can get your water bill down to as low as 12.20$.

So — assuming this isn’t a hoax0rz — call your council person and complain.

Full text of the release after the jump. Really, I am looking for thoughts on this one.
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