congress

Congressman McEachin and House Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer Rock Shockoe Atelier

Landon Shroder | October 8, 2018

Topics: congress, Congressman McEachin, Democrats, denim, Jeans, richmond, RVA, Shockoe Atelier, Steny H. Hoyer

Congressman Donald McEachin and House Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer toured Shockoe Antelier (Shockoe) in Richmond earlier today. The visit, part of Hoyer’s Make it in America tour, has been focusing on job creation, entrepreneurship, and how government can help grow and support small businesses: which makes Shockoe Atelier a great local establishment for a fact-finding mission. One of Richmond’s premier establishments for denim couture, the business has a back-story that is uniquely American, being founded by immigrants from Romania and France.

Shockoe is a unique spot for fashion in the River City, as their denim is handmade in a workshop attached to their showroom. Touring the workshop floor, the Congressmen eagerly listened to stories from owners Anthony, Pierre, and Brigitte Lupesco along with their operations director, Robert Nolley. Along with chatting to workshop employees, the Congressmen took in Shockoe’s process, learning how their denim is sourced, supply chain issues, and how their business has grown in the 21st Century economy.

Sitting down for a roundtable after the tour, the Congressmen congratulated Shockoe on their success. McEachin opened the roundtable by saying it was time Congress did some nation building at home, and that “we need to create more well paying jobs that grow the Middle Class.” He also said that policymakers needed to create economic conditions that allowed companies like Shockoe to be competitive and thrive.

“American small businesses can out-compete anyone in the world, they just need a level playing field,” said McEachin, before saying that Congress has missed opportunities to help small businesses gain access to capitol. “I believe we can change that in the next congress, that’s why we’re here. We want to hear the challenges you are facing…and take those insights across the country.”

Hoyer who was in town stumping for 7th District Democratic Candidate for Congress, Abigail Spanberger, spoke next after an introduction from McEachin. Observing the minimalist and stylish interior of Shockoe, Hoyer noted that it was refreshing to be in a place that wasn’t overly pretentious.

“Normally, I come into these fancy buildings and everything is brand new, but that is not how 90 percent of businesses start,” going on to say, “what you’ve done is taken an old place, and made it vibrant and new.”

He was quick to articulate that the U.S. needs to make sure jobs are available to make quality American goods that people around the world want to buy.

“We’re five percent of the world’s market, but 95 percent of the market is outside our borders,” he said. Addressing this challenge, he said his Make it in America agenda focuses on three interdependent issues: skills training, entrepreneurship, and infrastructure, and that the name of this program was a play on words; moving away from the old idiom “made in America,” as a way to better reflect the goals of small businesses succeeding in 2018.

Congressman Steny H. Hoyer and Pierre Lupusco

Given the immigration story of Shockoe, Hoyer spoke extensively about the immigration experience in the U.S. and how it has always been a positive force in the American economy. Referencing The New Colossus poem on the Statue of Liberty — which reads — “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses…the wretched refuse of your teeming shore,” — Hoyer said, “She was dead flat wrong. We didn’t get the wretched refuse, we got some of the most entrepreneurial, courageous, risk taking, and ambitious people in the world.” Looking at Pierre and Brigitte, he said, “You two are two of those people.”

“I love your slogan, made in America by immigrants.”

Asked “Why denim?” by McEachin, Anthony said it was about legacy and taking his parent’s legacy and making it American.

“There is not much more of an iconic American product than a pair of jeans,” he said. Building on this, Brigitte pointed out that moving to the U.S. gave their family more options than staying in her native France, where the opportunities to engage in fashion design were predicated exclusively on who you knew (as opposed to the quality of your product).

As the roundtable ended, both Congressmen were interested to learn that the majority of their business was done online, with Shockoe’s primary fashion markets being located in places like New York, Los Angeles, U.K. and Europe.

“We got a lot of support from the Richmond community,” said Anthony, when Hoyer asked about how they connected to capitol to grow their brand. “We don’t have a fabric source in the U.S. anymore,” he said, highlighting that their main supplier went out of business. “So all of our fabric is imported from Italy or Japan.”

Acknowledging these challenges, especially with finding quality denims, Anthony said there is a still a fair amount of boot-strapping with a scrappy fashion brand like theirs — which is precisely why the House Democratic Whip and Congressman McEachin showed up at their shop in the River City this morning.

Reports to National Sexual Assault Hotline Jump 147 Percent

RVA Staff | September 28, 2018

Topics: brett kavanaugh, congress, Professor Christine Blasey Ford, RAINN, Republicans, sexual assault, supreme Court, testimony, women

Yesterday’s testimony by Professor Christine Blasey Ford about being sexually assaulted by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was a testimony to the bravery and courage of survivors everywhere. A sympathetic, articulate, and well spoken individual, Ford highlighted the deep trauma and pain that victims of sexual assault bear everyday.

Alternately, Kavanaugh and the Republican men on the Senate Judiciary Committee demonstrated a complete lack of empathy for women who have experienced sexual assault. And according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), there are 321,500 victims of rape and sexual assault in the US each year – one every 98 seconds.

Despite the cold reception she received, one of the unintended consequences of Ford’s testimony yesterday was the empowerment of women to come forward with their stories and reports of sexual assault. As millions of women listened to Ford detail her experiences, then listened to Kavanaugh and the all male Republican squad gnash their teeth, wail, and defend allegations of sexual assault, women started calling the National Sexual Assault Hotline in record numbers to detail their own experiences.

Time Magazine has reported that the hotline saw a 147 percent increase in calls yesterday, “compared to a normal workday.” The obvious correlation? The testimony of Ford. RAINN asserts that when sexual assault is in the news-cycle, there is always a concomitant spike in reports. However, yesterday’s numbers exist outside of anything which might be deemed normative; more so, given the fierce defense of Kavanaugh that took place on the Senate floor.

There are now three allegations of sexual assault and misconduct against Kavanaugh, the last being alleged by Julie Swetnick, who claims that the judge and his friends would get women drunk so they could be “gang raped.” The Senate Judicial Committee has announced that it will vote today on the fate of Kavanaugh, in what has been one of the most politically outrageous episodes of our hyper-partisan times.

*RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline can be reached at: 800.656.HOPE (4673)

The Best (or weirdest) Political Ad of the Mid-Term Season Has Just Arrived

Landon Shroder | September 20, 2018

Topics: Attack Ad, Bigfoot, congress, Creative Agencies, Democrats, Mid-Terms, Political Ads, politics, Republicans

While Virginia had its own political controversy with the mysterious cryptozoological phenomenon earlier this summer with the great Bigfoot Erotica scandal of 2018, peak Bigfoot has now been achieved in the contest for Minnesota’s 3rd District. Apparently all that was needed for the creature to reveal its existence to the world was the ongoing political climate. The ad, released by Democratic challenger, Dean Phillips, uses the North American Yeti to make the point that his challenger, incumbent Republican Erik Paulson, is more elusive and harder to find than Bigfoot himself.

The ad starts with Bigfoot wondering out loud: “I thought I was good at hiding,” before saying “Then Erik Paulson comes along.” The arc of the story only grows more ironically hilarious from there as Bigfoot opines: “How can you have tens of thousands of people looking for you all the time, and not one of them find you. I started to wonder, does Erik Paulson even exist?” From there Bigfoot sets out on a quest to find the Republican Congressman, armed with nothing more than a classic Ford T-Bird, a roller cooler, and an old school VHS video camera. Narrating the video in first person, Bigfoot tells the viewers his plan, “Paulsen takes piles of money from big pharma and votes to erode essential healthcare protections. So the most likely place to find him is at a big pharmaceutical company.” Staking out the lobby of one such company, Bigfoot eventually finds his man, telling the audience that he was prepared to stay there for weeks, but that “it took seven minutes,” before coyly smiling at the camera.

The ad has already been viewed 48, 358 times on YouTube and an additional 144,000 on Phillips’ Facebook page and has been widely lauded in marketing and advertising news, and even more conservative publications like Forbes, who called it, “fantastic”. According to Ad Week the campaign video was made on something of an ad-hoc basis with volunteers from the campaign and various agencies pitching in creative direction. There is no doubt that this campaign ad will be remembered as one of the greats, and in an age of visceral attack ads that are often deeply personal; this combination of film making, thematics, and irony was an interesting reimagining of how attack politics can be done in a way that is light-hearted and contemporary.

So, #2018.

Vice President Mike Pence Just Went all in on Space Force

RVA Staff | August 9, 2018

Topics: Armed Forces, congress, Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Space Force, Star Date, US Space Command, Vice President

President Trump never misses an opportunity to thrash, tarnish, and slander previous administrations, so it is no surprise that earlier today his vice president, Mike Pence, stood somberly in front of an American flag and said these words: “While to often previous administrations all but neglected the growing security threats emerging in space, President Trump stated clearly and forcefully that space is, in his own words, ‘a warfighting domain'”. Cue the confetti lined parade on 5th Avenue, the thousands of space fighters with laser guns standing in review, and the legions of spacecraft ready for deployment into the great unknown.

Space Force. That is now a thing and a phrase in our lexicon. Despite the absurdity of it all, Pence announced that Space Force will be established by star-date 2020 in a speech to the Pentagon. And just to double down on the need for said Space Force, apparently China and Russia will be our main galactic enemies, even though we currently work with them on all International Space Station related projects. So much so, that we launch our own astronauts into space via Russia’s space agency (pesky details).

According to constitutional law, however, only Congress can establish a new branch of the military. So with midterms looming it is yet unclear if the establishment of Space Force will become a platform that both Democrats and Republicans run on or against. The last time Congress established a new branch of the armed forces was in 1940 with the creation of the Air Force. In his press conference, Pence also said, “Today the Department of Defense will release a report outlining the first stages of our administration’s plan to implement the President’s guidance and turn his vision into a reality,” and that the report, “identifies concrete steps that our administration will take to lay the foundation for a new Department of the Space Force.”

CNN has reported that the new Space Force will fall under the purview of the US Space Command. Pence cited the threat from Russia and China more than once and alluded to the fact that both countries are developing technologies to target US satellites. Namely laser beams and hypersonic missiles to launch attacks in space from here on planet Earth (a place the VP should return to).

This statement by Pence sums up everything we need to know about Space Force, “What was once peaceful and uncontested is now crowded and adversarial. Today other nations are seeking to disrupt our space based systems and challenge American supremacy in space as never before.”

It would appear that the vast and infinite emptiness of space has become crowded; or the US has just ran out of countries to invade. Welcome to the age of Space Force.

Virginia Politics Has Now Hit Peak Weird with Bigfoot Erotica

Landon Shroder | July 30, 2018

Topics: Bigfoot, Bigfoot Erotica, congress, Democrats, Denver Riggleman, Leslie Cockburn, Mid-Terms, Republicans

Virginia politics has now entered a new phase. Bigfoot erotica, a new subgenre of cryptozoological inquiry in which the elusive creature is pictured in sexual situations, has popped up on the Instagram account of Republican Congressional Candidate for the 5th District, Denver Riggleman. While Riggleman’s account is apparently set to private, his Democratic challenger, Leslie Cockburn, allegedly found the images and they do not disappoint. Cockburn has now taken to Twitter questioning the candidate’s suitability in running for high office, saying, “He has been exposed as a devotee of Bigfoot erotica. This is not what we need on Capitol Hill.”

While Bigfoot erotica makes for questionable credentials for high office, Cockburn, in the same Tweet, also claimed that Riggleman is an acolyte of Republican Senatorial Candidate, Corey Stewart. “My opponent Denver Riggleman, running mate of Corey Stewart, was caught on camera campaigning with a white supremacist.”

According to The Daily Progress, which broke the story, Riggleman has penned at least one book on Bigfoot called, “Bigfoot Exterminators Inc. The Partially Cautionary, Mostly True Tale of Monster Hunt 2006.” The campaign manager for Cockburn, responding to the viral tweets, has said, “Leslie has been traveling throughout the district meeting with real people about real issues that matter to them…Meanwhile, Mr. Riggleman is home scrubbing his social media of ‘Bigfoot erotica’ and who knows what else.”

For his part, Riggleman denies any association with Bigfoot erotica and claims the posts were a joke played on him by his military friends, claiming he never thought they would be used against him “politically”; clearly misreading the political climate of 2018. One of the erotic images had a big black box covering the elusive forest creature’s penis and was captioned with, “Cover art for #matinghabitsofbigfoot almost complete. I hide nothing in this magnificent tome. Don’t erase the censor box…”

Cockburn’s tweets have now gone viral, being shared over 4,000 times, and were met with some colorful commentary from the Twitter-verse, the best of which can be found below:

For more on Bigfoot Erotica, check out this article by Buzzfeed. Don’t ever say RVA Mag didn’t do anything for you, Virginia.

Self-Confessed Pedophile and White Supremacist Running for Congress in Virginia

RVA Staff | June 1, 2018

Topics: Commonwealth, congress, Elections, Pedophile, Virginia politics, white supremacy

In what can only be described as one of the most disturbing political interviews ever, The Huffington Post recently spoke with a congressional candidate for Virginia’s 10th District who confessed to being a pedophile. When asked about being a pedophile and writing about pedophilia, he readily admitted, “It’s a mix of both. When people go over the top there’s a grain of truth to what they say.”

Nathan Larson, a 37-year-old accountant from Charlottesville, is apparently running to replace incumbent Republican Barbara Comstock, whose district includes, Clarke, Frederick, Loudoun, Manassas, Winchester, and parts of Fairfax, and Prince William County.

Running as an independent, Larson’s campaign platform is apparently that of a “quasi-neoreactionary libertarian”. Among the litany of bat-shit issues he is running on, is “benevolent white supremacy”, patriarchy, “putting an end to U.S. involvement in foreign wars arising from our country’s alliance with Israel”, (a blatant anti-semitic dog-whistle), and freedom from age restrictions – an endorsement of sexual relations with minors.

According to the Huffington Post, Larson has participated in multiple websites and messaging boards for pedophiles and talked extensively about child rape and other forms of gratuitous sexual assault. One such post made under the pseudonym “Lysander”, which identifies him as the administrator, not only directly referenced relations with his daughter, but also said, “Once sex with kids is legalized, I imagine the competition to get in their pants will be fierce.”

In the interview, Larson thankfully acknowledged that he does not have custody of his daughter, relinquishing custody rights in 2015, right before his ex-wife committed suicide. He has also made posts on the now defunct website called Incelocalypse, titled, “Here’s how to psyche yourself up to feel entitled to rape”. The post, reflective of the misogyny and potential violence surrounding incel culture and sub-culture, provides advice for men who believe they should remain celibate due to how they perceive their own physical appearance. “Why not establish a claim to rape any and all girls,” the post finished by saying, “If it weren’t a disproportionate reward for taking risk…then no one would bother to take risks, and humanity would stagnate.”

The potential for violence surrounding incel culture and sub-culture came about recently after Alex Minassian drove a van into a crowd of people in Toronto killing 10 and wounding 15. On his Facebook page before the incident, he left a message on his feed that said, “The incel rebellion has begun!”.

Larson’s campaign platform “manifesto” is also littered with anti-Semitic language including praise for Adolph Hitler and saying things like, “Jews will cite the Holocaust as an example of the dangers of white supremacist movements. But Jewish supremacists have also brought about the deaths of Gentiles for millennia…it is in the best interests of all races that whites defeat the Jews in the fight for supremacy in America.” This is followed by a call for “benevolent white supremacy” saying, “Like every other human being, I am indeed racist…What makes whites (or at least, the more highly-evolved whites) different from other races is our cultural creativeness.”

Anti-Semitic Imagery Accompanying Larson’s Manifesto

Larson’s pedophilia is woven together with an ideology that fuses a hatred of feminism with a need for upholding the patriarchy by doing away with age restrictions which govern things like the age in which someone can consent to marry. He states that women who marry “the man to whom she gives her virginity is more likely to have a successful marriage than a woman who has had other sexual relationships prior to marriage.” He goes on to state that the average marriageable age should be 17.5 years old. More reprehensibly, he claims pedophilia and “adult-child” sex is only prohibited because of the “Overton window” – a political theory which states that the public will only entertain a certain kind of discourse publically – based on a scale of extremes – and how the issues fit within this scale.

This is not the first time Larson has run for office, in 2008, he ran for the House of Delegates. According to Ballotpedia, his campaign website claimed his platform was running on the single issue of legalizing “Dignitas-style assisted suicide clinics in Virginia.”

In 2008, Larson was also arrested for sending a letter to the Secret Service saying he was going to kill then President Obama, landing him in prison for 14 months. In 2016, then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe restored civil rights to thousands of felons throughout the Commonwealth, including Larson, allowing him to run for Congress.

Grim.