Lots of updates to stories we have been following here on Bacon’s Rebellion:
How to lose in a landslide. The media was all over the story about racist posts by a Corey Stewart campaign consultant. Here’s the lead from the Richmond Times-Dispatch: “Republican Senate candidate Corey Stewart has paid more than $100,000 to a campaign consultant who has called the NAACP a “more violent” version of the KKK and said only a “fool” would start a business in a black neighborhood.”
John Whitbeck, the immediate past chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia, had the following reaction: “The Democrats’ only message against us right now is we’re racists, because they don’t have any agenda and they don’t have any message. If you make despicable tweets like that, all you’re doing is feeding the narrative that the Democrats are trying to use against us.”
From every sign I see, Stewart is going down in political career-ending flames. The only interesting question at this point is whether he will drag down the Republican Party with him. Meanwhile, Libertarian Party candidate Matt Waters, where are you? There are thousands of homeless Republicans right now who might want to vote for you — if only they knew you were out there.
Cheaters never prosper. A state investigation has found that a five-teacher cheating ring at Richmond’s Carver Elementary School gave pupils “inappropriate” assistance during Standards of Learning (SOL) tests. Some teachers helped students if they raised their hand or indicated whether items were correct or incorrect, reports the Times-Dispatch. The school had garnered recognition for the high achievements of its poor, inner-city pupil population.
School principal Kiwana Yates, who had received the R.E.B. Award for Distinguished Educational Leadership, has been replaced, but remains in the employ of the Richmond school system.
Will they strike or won’t they? In continued negotiations with its labor unions, Washington Metro management has agreed to raise wages for office employees and to stop outsourcing 31 of 271 janitorial jobs. In exchange, AFL-CIO Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 2 agreed to let Metro raise the health care insurance contributions of its members, creating a savings for the money-losing mass transit organization of $2.3 million. Said General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld: “We didn’t get everything we hoped for and neither did Local 2; however, this agreement fairly compensates employees while reducing Metro’s costs.”
Standing up for intolerance. Two historians have resigned from the University of Virginia’s Miller Center to protest the appointment of Marc Short, former legislative affairs director for the Trump administration. Melvyn P. Leffler and William I. Hitchcock said the appointment runs “counter to the Center’s fundamental values of nonpartisanship, transparency, openness, a passion for truth and objectivity, and civility.”
“Democracy today in the United States is in peril,” they wrote, according to the Washington Post. “… We must not normalize or rationalize hateful, cruel and demeaning behavior. When we see things to be wrong, we must speak out and take a stand.”
So, the solution to Trump’s partisanship is to trump it with ever greater partisanship? The response to Trump’s intolerance is to demonstrate even greater intolerance to those associated with him?
First case in point, in the news today: The Chesterfield school system has fired its chief of security, Donald Green, who had served since 2014. What was his offense? Did he bungle his job? No. Did Chesterfield schools suffer unforgivable lapses in security? No. He committed the cardinal sin three years ago of sharing the Facebook post displayed to the right.
