If You Read the Paper | Wed July 14
Words jESiO
Wednesday, July 14th, 2010 at 8:02 am
Ins, Outs, Guns, Pumpkins
Portsmouth Mayor ousted in recall election
In a 2-1 vote bringing out around 37% more voters than the recent school board/city council elections (16,000 versus 10,000), Portsmouth Mayor James Holley was ousted from office yesterday. This makes him the first politician in US history to be recalled twice.
The video link on Pilot‘s website shows an elderly man with slow but not quite slurred speech, giving his supporters blanket optimism, his thought patterns skipping like my old Grateful Dead CD. He jovially ended with “This is not the last time we will be together. Good night press! The party’s private!”
He’s 83. Besides the actual issue that got him booted this time (overstepping professional boundaries with an assistant), he’s had several run-ins with city council and Portsmouth citizens over the years. He needed to go. It was time. It’s unfortunate he didn’t take the opportunity to retire when he had it, for the sake of his own reputation and place in history, as well as the Portsmouth taxypayer (it cost $60,000 to execute this recall).
Having only lived on the Southside since 2004, I know very little about Mayor Holley outside of the scandalous. The Pilot mentions he was a pioneering civil rights leader in the 1950s and 60s. He was a dentist. He was the first African-American mayor in Hampton Roads when elected in 1984. He was instrumental in desegregation. He was a tireless promoter of Portsmouth. Wow! These are great things to be remembered for. While I’m glad he’s out, I’m going to try to respect the good things he accomplished and chalk a bit of this mess up to old age and disconnect.
But if he tries to run again….
Northrup Grumman may sell shipyard
Northrop Grumman, Virginia’s largest industrial employer, may sell or spin off the Newport News shipyard following an announcement they are closing two other shipbuilding locations in the Gulf. It is unclear what this means for the 20,000 locals who are employed there. When previous owner Tenneco spun the company out to shareholders, it spent a few rocky years known as Newport News Shipbuilding until Norhtrup Grumman bought them in 2001.
More to follow in a news conference later today.
Suffolk and Chesapeake named top places to live
A Beautiful Suffolk Subdivision | pic: noaa
BC mentioned this story yesterday, but I can’t resist giving my take.
So Money Magazine named Chesapeake and Suffolk in its Top 100 small cities. The criteria include “housing affordability, median income, school quality, arts and leisure, safety, health care, diversity, the local economy and commuting time.”
I wonder if the writers even came to Suffolk or Chesapeake? What “commuting time” are they referring to? Because if commuting through the downtown tunnel is deemed a “Top 100” trip, where the hell are these people from? Where else did they go?
And housing affordability? Yes. I can afford something built in a get-rich-quick boomfrenzy. And then weather happens and you end up like the residents of Suffolk’s Applewood Farms, none of whom I assume were approached by Money Magazine.
Kudos to the commentors. There’s the regular bickering about why my city is better than yours (come on people, everyone knows my city is the best–Go Norfolk!–I kid…sort of). There’s also a surprising amount of backlash towards the genericism and blandness of suburbuia. Some highlights:
Once A Local: Chesapeake was chosen because it is near “culture/arts in Norfolk” and “great beaches in Virginia Beach”. That doesn’t make Chesapeake a great place to live–it makes it the suburb of better cities that weren’t chosen.
Ethan, on the houses: “Vinyl wrapped boxes with brick fronts for $600K.”
Global Trekkie: “Although Chesapeake does not want anyone to know it, South Norfolk is in Chesapeake.”
Thanks Global Trekkie, this I did not know. This should be addressed more often, and for more reasons than one.
Virginia Beach does the right thing—preserves waterfront
After the economy tanked, developers for Virginia Beach’s Indigo Dunes (a planned 1,000 home development on the last remaining natural stretch of the Lynnhaven River) had to back out. Now the city has agreed to step in and buy the land, promising “the last major tract of undeveloped land along the Lynnhaven River, which boasts oyster beds, wetlands and a maritime forest, is preserved.”
Virginia Beach Mayor Will Sessoms highlighted city council’s commitment to open space.
Um…I wouldn’t go that far Sessoms. Have you been to any other piece of waterfront in your city in the last decade? Or farmland for that matter?
Don’t kill your wife
Two Portsmouth men were arrested when one (Larry Lingenfelter) hired another (Joseph Frampton) to go to Texas and kill his wife because he wanted sole custody of the children and was having trouble paying child support. Somehow, he did muster up $10,000 to hire a contract killer, though. Amazing what a man can do when he puts his mind to it.
On a side note, I just saw Zombieland, which I highly recommend. It prompted me to wiki Woody Harrelson, which I also highly recommend. You will learn that, like Mr. Frampon, Woody’s father was also a contract killer who got busted. Small world!
Andy Warhol also liked ice cream | pic: worldgallery
Free Ice Cream at Town Point Park today
Free ice cream is awesome. Nuff said.
Congress to hear VT families on gun laws
Why do people love guns so much? I will never understand this.
So, the story: Basically the law already requires background checks on anyone trying to buy a gun from a vendor.
However, if you go to a gun show, this is waived. The families of victims and survivors (and their families) of the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech are meeting with a House Judiciary Committee today to see about closing this loophole.
Think of it this way. If you buy a car from a dealership, it has requirements to meet–to make sure you can drive the car off the lot. If you buy a car from Johnny Honda on Craigslist, he doesn’t need to know about your seventeen DUI’s, lack of insurance, and missing retina. He just cares about your cash.
It’s currently the same with guns, which is what this group wants to change. Opponents argue that the VT killer did not purchase his gun from a gun show so this is irrelevent. It isn’t. Just because he didn’t, what’s to stop others with criminal backgrounds or histories of mental illness–those who know they won’t qualify at a store–to head to the gun show next time they get a chance?
Reasons the 21st century is making us miserable
Why we shouldn’t live our lives online. And a really sad bear to boot.
Smashing Pumpkins show tomorrow night–early arrivers may see sound check
Check out the website for a message from Billy Corgan (or as Courtney Love called him last month, “Billy Pumpkin”). He’s hoping the first twenty or so of you can get in to see the soundcheck, but it may not work if you’re douchey. Bonus: if you’re cool, more people may be allowed in.
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ABOUT THE WRITER
jESiO (jesi owens) has been involved with AltDaily since 2009 and has done a variety of things for the site and community during that time. Memorable events include creating SPIN (Street Performing in Norfolk) and bringing busking to the streets of Norfolk, working on bettering the local music scene any way she can, throwing The Rise Up concert at Attucks Theater, and contributing to If You Read the Paper. She at times writes, shoots photography, edits, plans events, and makes homemade lattes for Hannah.
jESiO works for Airbnb.com, makes soap, digs yoga, and piddles with her art/music blog jesiowastaken.blogspot.com.
Other posts by jESiO.
Other posts by jESiO.
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It’s been a nice decade, having Northrop Grumman at the helm in Newport News. They consolidated operations from elsewhere else into our own backyard, a great boon of steady and increased employment for us since 2001. But when a CEO uses phrases like “little synergy” and “explore separating,” he is not mincing words. The message is crystal clear. One way or another, I believe it has everything to do with their order books.
The bittersweet news here is that it’s not us, it’s them. By all appearances NG has done a bang-up job of shifting work to Hampton Roads, not away. Even as they seek to spin off operations, Newport News remains the crown jewel.
So why sell, and sell now? A simple answer – and I haven’t seen the order books – is that NG is timing their purchase and sale before a cyclical reduction in work. A decade of plenty (NG profits), a decade of famine (someone else’s loss), and so on.
A more progressive answer is that NG might’ve caught a whiff of larger change within the military-industrial complex. They’ll sell now, with a few more contracts on the books for the next guy, at the same time knowing that the feds are going to strategically realign our defense priorities. As in, halting new shipbuilding. As in, billions for schools and bakesales for the navy… okay, now I’m dreaming.
On a brief tangent, the 20,000 employees of Northrop in NN – as reported by the Pilot and picked up here – are not all shipbuilding employees. Among other things, NG announced a joint venture with Areva in 2008 to bring 500 jobs in the nuclear energy sector.
But now it really is time to say goodbye, and to begin realigning ourselves as a region. Because Northrop might sell to someone else, and it might all be gravy for a few more years. But the people at the top of NG know what they’re doing. We’d do right by ourselves to begin planning our own exit strategy for a waning industry.
(Chad Jeremy’s Summer Song:) But don’tcha know, that it hurts me so, to say goodbye to you-ou? Wish you didn’t have to go…
It’s not about “lov[ing] guns,” as you put it, the opposition by gun owners such as myself to closing the “gunshow loophole” is more about practicality and effectiveness.
First off, the “gunshow loophole” description is fundamentally flawed. Anytime an FFL holder sells a firearm, he or she must perform a background check. Period. It doesn’t matter if the sale is at their storefront or at a booth at a gun show. An individual is legally mandated to get an FFL if they are in the regular business of dealing in firearms. Sales between private citizens, though, are not required to perform background checks if they just occasionally sell and buy firearms with other private citizens. Gun shows are a mix of those two types of transactions, and laws are no different inside the venue as they are outside the venue.
“Closing” the loophole by mandating a background check for a sale at a gun show is just silly, because both parties could simply walk outside the venue, conduct the sale in broad daylight, and it would be completely legal without a background check.
Besides that, gun shows are simply not a very popular venue for the purchase of firearms by criminals. A BJS study in 2001 showed that 0.8% of prison inmates reported getting their guns at a gun show. Less than 1%. And, it’s not like closing this loophole is going to prevent that 0.8% of criminals who get their guns at gun shows from getting guns at all — the black market in stolen firearms is the predominant source of firearms by criminals, and would be more than happy to pick up the slack.
Lets ignore the Second Amendment and the bigger philosophical discussions on gun control and focus on practicality for a moment. How many millions of dollars that Virginia doesn’t have should we be spending to shore up this magical loophole that, by most objective measures, has no measurable impact on the overall crime and homicide rates? If it’s not going to have a measurable impact on crime, why waste the time, money, and effort?
The cognitive dissonance I see in many of my fellow liberals when it comes to gun regulation astounds me. We’re quick to point out the ineffectiveness of drug prohibition and the waste of billions of tax payer dollars fighting the war on drugs, but a war on guns seems perfectly sensible to many. Guns don’t cause crime. Banning guns doesn’t do anything to prevent crime (see the effects of the UK’s handgun ban). Let’s focus on the people. Better employment opportunities, better educational opportunities, better community outreach and, for the times when those fail, better law enforcement. Blaming inanimate objects doesn’t make our communities or ourselves any safer.
The “Reasons the 21st century is making us feel miserable” link is one of my favorite articles in a long time… very well thought out commentary, so thanks, Jesse, for sharing it. Reading it makes me feel a little like Indiana Jones, barely escaping a giant boulder or other crushing eventuality – in my case, by virtue of having spent a couple crucial decades of development in the 20th century. It also makes me fear for my future kids.