Friday, May 10, 2013
Democratic gubernatorial candidate laid out platform at George Mason's Arlington campus.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe said Thursday he would push to reform the state's Standards of Learning, or SOL, tests if he is elected in November. "The current, once-a-year, high-stakes, multiple-choice testing isn't working for students, parents or teachers," he told a crowd of more than 300 people at George Mason University's Arlington campus, to rousing applause. Under the current system, a fifth-grade teacher who raises a child from a first-grade reading level to a fourth-grade reading level is considered a failure, he said. Teachers who want to break up the test into smaller portions, or test at different levels based on student achievement should be encouraged, he said. McAuliffe also said he would establish a "…
Thursday, May 9, 2013
ABC News: About half as many Virginians vote in gubernatorial elections as in presidential years.
Anyone familiar with Terry McAuliffe knows he can tell a good story. The one he told Thursday in Arlington, at George Mason's campus as he was wrapping up a five-day tour of the state, was about this past November. It was Election Day. McAuliffe, at the request of the campaigns of Barack Obama and Tim Kaine, was asked to head to a polling station in Henrico County, where voters were still waiting in a long line as darkness fell. He said he went there and handed out coffee, hot chocolate and hand warmers. And everyone got to vote. And then he asked everyone in the room to mobilize for this year's election. [McAuliffe: Reform Virginia's Standards of Learning Tests] Turnout, often, is key. But now more than ever that isn't lost on Northern …
Sunday, April 28, 2013
"Virginia's got to have the ability to collect all sales tax revenue," says Sen. Mark Warner, who is co-sponsor of a bill that would allow local government to collect sales taxes on Internet purchases.
Consumers across the country increasingly make purchases online, in some cases doing so to avoid paying sales tax. When that happens, local governments like Fairfax County miss out on much-needed revenue to help pay for roads, schools and police. One group estimates Virginia is missing out on hundreds of millions of dollars each year — $422 million in FY2012 — according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The group says in all, states will lose $23 billion in 2012. That could change soon. Virginia's two Democratic Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine voted in the majority (70-24) this week to proceed with a vote on the Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013. The legislation will allow state and local governments to require Internet …
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
State Sen. Adam Ebbin, U.S. Sen. Mark Warner among those who have changed their profile pictures.
You probably have seen a red square with a pink equals sign on it in your Facebook, Twitter and other social media feeds lately — a symbol that stands for marriage equality. It stems from an effort by the Human Rights Campaign that coincides with oral arguments being heard by the U.S. Supreme Court this week regarding the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act. DOMA, as it is known, allows the federal government to discriminate against same-sex couples. The equality symbol signifies that marriage really is all about love, according to the Human Rights Campaign. "It's nice for people on Facebook to see their Facebook friends standing up, and seeing so many people doing that," said state Sen. Adam Ebbin, D-Alexandria. Ebbin, who is…
Saturday, March 9, 2013
Sen. Mark Warner facilitates Brett Wanamaker's marriage proposal to staffer Beth Adelson. Did a Congressman finally get a proposal through?
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Sunday, February 17, 2013
Startup Act 3.0 combines elements of immigration reform to spur job growth.
A bill introduced by Virginia Sen. Mark Warner this week designed to jump-start business by creating "Entrepreneur Visas" and "STEM Visas" for highly educated and entrepreneurial immigrants to stay in the United States could help the Northern Virginia region compete on a larger scale, says the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce. “Entrepreneurs are the future of the Northern Virginia region," Jim Corcoran, president and CEO of the Fairfax Chamber, told Patch. "The Fairfax Chamber applauds Senator Warner and the rest of the bi-partisan sponsors for their leadership on reforms and new ideas that will make our nation, and our region, more attractive to entrepreneurial businesses, add jobs, and make us even more competitive on a global scale…
Saturday, January 5, 2013
Kaine said Thursday he is "rested and ready."
Tim Kaine was sworn in Thursday as the newest Senator from Virginia. Vice President Joe Biden presided over the mock ceremony after the official swearing-in on the Senate floo. Anne Holton, Kaine's wife, proudly held a bible as her husband took his oath to serve as Virginia's junior Senator at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. "I feel wonderful — rested and ready," Kaine said at a reception in his honor at the Hart Senate Office Building. "Life doesn't happen unless you are able to listen and compromise. With this beginning of the 113th Congress, the Senate has 15 newcomers ... and I've watched group dynamics just as you have, and when you have that much change it opens the windows and rescrambles assumptions." Kaine, a former governor…
Monday, December 24, 2012
"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," the NRA's Wayne LaPierre said.
In an Friday morning press conference, the Fairfax-based National Rifle Association broke its weeklong silence following the horrific shooting of 26 people at a school in Newtown, Conn., and called for a surge of gun-carrying "good guys" around American schools. NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre called for a new kind of American domestic security revolving around armed civilians, arguing that "the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." "We care about our president, so we protect him with armed Secret Service agents," LaPierre said. "Members of Congress work in offices surrounded by Capitol Police officers. Yet, when it comes to our most beloved, innocent, and vulnerable members of the American …
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Warner says he wants to continue his work in the U.S. Senate.
U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., announced Tuesday that he will not run for governor in 2013, saying that he wants to continue the work he was sent to do in Washington. Warner, in a statement issued shortly after 3 p.m., said Virginians of all political stripes have approached him over the past year to make the bid — which he said he would consider and then make a decision after the November election. "I’ve talked to a lot of Virginians I respect, and I’ve talked about it with my family," Warner said in a statement. "But when I asked Virginians to hire me as their Senator, I made a promise to come to Washington to try to be a problem solver. I have to admit, it’s been tougher than I expected. But I’ve tried to keep at it." Warner's decision…
Sunday, November 18, 2012
Senator tells Associated Press he'll announce decision before Thanksgiving.
Sen. Mark Warner plans to announce before Thanksgiving whether he'll run for governor again, according to the Associated Press. The former governor, a Democrat, served as the Commonwealth's chief executive from 2002 to 2006. Virginia is the only state in the country where a governor cannot succeed himself. Former DNC chair Terry McAuliffe has already thrown his hat in the ring and will face Republicans Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling and state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. If Warner walks away from another run for governor, he'll be teaming up in the Senate with the state's soon to be junior senator, Senator-elect Tim Kaine, who served as Warner's lieutenant governor and is himself a former governor of Virginia. In a poll conducted Nov. 8-12 by …
Philip Charles Cohen
4:22 pm on Monday, April 29, 2013
@Don Fowler, Yes, like we too have in Australia, a federally applied value added tax on most goods and services ... Ah, but that would be too simple; in the US, they like to complicate matters ... more ›