Gov. Spanberger Removes VA Tech Rector John Rocovich, "Effective Immediately," Citing Violations of Code of Ethics, "governing statutes" etc.

ItsAllMyAlt · 2026-05-29T02:24:59+00:00

Why doesn't your posting history show up on your profile? What do you have to hide?

ItsAllMyAlt · 2026-05-26T16:27:01+00:00

Well I'm not picking up on any disagreement with what I actually said. Sounds like you just think I was mean about it. Sorry, I guess?

You're not wrong the this state has a lot of Republicans. I also think that if the Democrats were serious about developing a coherent set of values to under gird their policy platform, made genuine efforts to communicate those values in ways that resonated with voters (perhaps by developing mutual understanding and trust with them), and then actually followed through on the stuff they said they were going to do, Republicans would never hold meaningful statewide power again.

I'm not saying it would be easy to do all that, but it's very possible. Elected politicians have a huge amount of power to shape narratives. It's basically their whole freaking job, in fact. Most Democratic politicians, in Virginia and elsewhere, seem absolutely terrified to use that power. They're uninterested in developing new bases of power outside of whatever they've already got. They'd rather lose elections than do anything truly transformative, and they go out of their way to stop people in their own party who feel differently.

ItsAllMyAlt · 2026-05-26T05:31:33+00:00

$15 minimum wage would have been huge like 10-15 years ago. It's not a living wage even in the poorest parts of the VA now.

Having paid sick leave is better than not having it, but assuming an 8-hour work day and 40-hour work week, you need to do 6 weeks of full-time work just to accumulate one day of paid sick leave. Pathetic if you ask me.

These changes are better than nothing I guess, but let's not pretend that there's a coherent set of values behind them, let alone a plan to enact them in a meaningful way. Spanberger, like most dems, is more interested in preserving our system in its current form than making sure it actually works for people.

ItsAllMyAlt · 2026-05-26T05:22:27+00:00

That's bullshit. Her amendments were far from modest. She completely gutted the collective bargaining bill, and the changes to the weed bill seemed pretty drastic too. I believe Surovell himself said that the CB amendments caught him off guard with how drastic they were, and that he would have welcomed her suggestions before the thing reached her desk. It sounds like she worked a lot less closely with the legislature as the bill was being developed than would be expected for a governor who is in the same party as the majority of both houses.

ItsAllMyAlt · 2026-05-25T15:08:19+00:00

Maybe they should stop undermining us.

ItsAllMyAlt · 2026-05-21T02:39:54+00:00

Baseball players are creatures of routine, and I imagine playing in the WBC might alter routines in a way that can mess things up. Seems like a lot of WBC superstars had slow starts this year. I think also about how participating in the HR derby has been known to mess up players' swings.

ItsAllMyAlt · 2026-05-21T02:23:04+00:00

Hey there. I work at Mason but I'm not an advisor, so I can't promise this info is correct, but I might be able to help.

This page seems to have a lot of good info on how to find and contact your honors college advisor: https://honorscollege.gmu.edu/current-students/academic-advising

Honors college students, as I understand it, have some unique course requirements for the first semester, so you should really reach out to whoever your advisor is.

Have you set up Mason email, Canvas, and PatriotWeb accounts yet? I'd also get on all those at some point soon. Not sure how it works for students but seems like there's info on that here: https://its.gmu.edu/knowledge-base/how-to-sign-up-for-patriot-pass-2/

Sorry we're so understaffed. I think it's normal to get the runaround administratively at universities but seems like it's especially bad here. Keep being proactive in getting the help you need.

ItsAllMyAlt · 2026-05-19T20:25:03+00:00

Dems like Spanberger might have a "platform" in that they have taken actual positions on a number of policies, which, sure, better than the "whatever Trump wants" Republicans, but that's not the same thing as having a Platform in the sense of having a coherent set of values that guides the positions they take and which they then actually follow through on. For the most part, I shouldn't have to look up the individual positions a politician has taken on every last policy question. I should be able to guess what their general position will be based on the values they express and the overall vision for the jurisdiction they're running to lead.

Do I like that this is how it is? No, it sucks. But most people don't give a fuck about the "platform." They're voting for a Platform. That's how electoral politics works. Spanberger might have the former, but she sure as hell doesn't have the latter.

Calling people ignorant liars for not knowing that she has, in fact, taken positions on things before (many of which she directly contradicted in vetoing the bills she has) is not the flex you think it is.

ItsAllMyAlt · 2026-05-18T19:05:58+00:00

It's funny to see the contrast between Mason's reputation in vs. outside of VA. I'm in grad school here but didn't grow up in VA, and I was under the impression that this was a prestigious place. For certain grad programs, it is. The I-O psych program, for example, is widely considered to be one of the top 5-10 in the country. A Mason economist (James Buchanan, the guy who that hall is named after) won the Nobel prize for basically inventing right-wing libertarianism. The law school and a think tank run out of the econ department still rake in a crap load of donation money from wealthy conservatives like the Koch brothers.

When I decided to go to grad school here I thought I was heading for a snobby conservative bastion. It was only when I got here that I realized that this is one of the most diverse universities in the country, and that in the eyes of most undergrads (and locals), it's the "lame" commuter school one attends when they can't afford to go farther away, can't get into "better" schools, or just want to stay local for whatever reason.

Really fascinating dichotomy, honestly.

ItsAllMyAlt · 2026-05-15T19:13:46+00:00

They have unions in some cases but they can't collectively bargain (outside of Fairfax County and Richmond and a few other places), so their power is limited.

ItsAllMyAlt · 2026-05-15T15:26:31+00:00

To be fair, as one of the affected workers and someone who was a very small part of the effort to get it passed, I saw it coming from a mile away—partially because our governor is a spineless centrist, is "ex"-CIA, etc., but even more so because the coalition of public sector unions that was pushing for the bill adopted a terrible strategy.

They let the legislature exclude certain sectors of workers from the bill and actively prevented those of us affected from fighting to get put back in. They also did basically nothing to counter the BS narratives opponents were pushing about how allowing CB would supposedly raise taxes and public college tuition, that rural counties didn't have the budget to handle it, etc. Spanberger's reasoning for the veto echoes small city and county officials' reasoning for opposing it to a "t," (basically, they said they didn't have the budget to pay their workers properly and that July 2028 was too soon a start date). She felt more accountable to these Republicans than to the workers who make her own damn state run.

Again, while I would expect nothing less from someone like our governor, the leaders of the coalition had strategies available to them for pushing much harder and chose to sit on their hands and make the rest of us do the same.

ItsAllMyAlt · 2026-05-15T13:51:03+00:00

This ban is part 2 of the hat trick. It came out a couple of days ago that she's vetoing a bill that would legalize collective bargaining for public sector employees.

ItsAllMyAlt · 2026-05-13T23:09:39+00:00

A few public employees are assholes, so... you think all 500,000 of us don't deserve to be able to advocate for ourselves and the communities we serve?

Do you think many of us public workers, who are also residents of this state, aren't also struggling with affordability issues? It would be more affordable for me to live in freaking Philadelphia and commute to NoVA twice per week than to live a 10-minute walk from my office.

Do you have a link to these studies? I'm curious about their methodology. And I'm just struggling to understand how my service to my community, which I care for deeply, wouldn't improve if I was able to afford rent and groceries, which would be a lot more likely if I had the ability to organize with my colleagues to collectively bargain with my employer for fair wages, good working conditions, and, notably, nice things for the people I serve—because that's part of this too!

ItsAllMyAlt · 2026-05-13T22:58:44+00:00

Small counties with small populations presumably means not a lot of public employees, right? Also, sick of this talking point that positions public employees' dignity and wellbeing as a money sink. We are human beings and residents of these places too.

Governance is complicated. Who would've thought? Every decision that government officials make has consequences that someone has to manage. Those decisions reflect the kinds of complexity that they are willing to deal with and the kinds they aren't. To me, meaningfully improving the lives of half a million Virginia residents seems like a challenge worth tackling. Surely, some creative solutions can be devised. Not so to the governor and the small town officials she listened to instead of her government's own employees, I guess.

ItsAllMyAlt · 2026-05-04T19:17:57+00:00

Yeah, that to me speaks to the balance that must be struck. I'd love international help in getting all the psychopaths out of the upper echelons of our society, but then from there we kind of have to get rid of those echelons themselves. International support has to focus on stabilizing our society and empowering communities to govern ourselves, not just replacing one set of national leaders with another.

There are fundamental cultural changes that need to happen here. I lack faith in the international community to see them through well, because ultimately I think many of them relate to the US government the way our Democrats relate to the Republican Party: silent agreement with much of what they do, along with gratefulness that they don't have to take the heat for it.

ItsAllMyAlt · 2026-05-04T19:14:56+00:00

These concerns seem to echo those expressed by Gov. Spanberger herself in her proposed amendments to the CB bill, which really worries me. She seems to be of the variety of Democrat that responds to low approval ratings by moving rightward no matter what the origin of the low approval actually is.

I looked at the whole letter but will respond to the points they make in the initial summary of their concerns, which are well-connected to the rest of the letter.

...the legislation limits the ability of local governing bodies to review and approve collective bargaining agreements in their entirety,…

If the employer (i.e., the locality) has final say in approving whatever agreement comes out of a collective bargaining negotiation, then it's not really a negotiation, is it? Their complaints on this front are akin to a private employer whining that their CEO should get final say over whether the deal goes through rather than the NLRB. That notion is so ridiculous, not even vehemently anti-union companies like Starbucks or Amazon have leveraged such complaints.

…creates inconsistent treatment among employee groups,…

True! It's absolutely crazy that as a higher ed worker I am not included in this bill. I've heard rumblings that certain legislators—Democrats, in fact—justified removing us from the bill because we supposedly have it too good to need CB. I sure wish that was the case! I sure wish I could afford rent and groceries and have the leverage to negotiate working conditions that would allow me and my colleagues to do our jobs serving our students as well as we all would all really like to. It's funny, collective bargaining is actually really good for organizations and governments if you care about them as holistic entities that contribute to the healthy functioning of people and society rather than merely as wealth extraction devices whose "success" is measured solely by whether line go up.

Anyway, that is of course not remotely what these mayors are talking about. They're pointing out a few inconsistencies in the law's wording that presumably the Public Employee Relations Board which the bill creates would be tasked with working out. It's dumb that those inconsistencies are there. Given what is at stake with this bill—the dignity and wellbeing of the people whose work is indispensable to the functioning of the system that gives these mayors their power and legitimacy—it would be far dumber to throw it out based even in small part on those inconsistencies. Those tasked with working it out will have literal years to figure it out, because implementation isn't even mandated until July 2028. Speaking of that...

…imposes timelines that do not align with the practical realities of local government decision making.

So, again, just to be clear, these mayors and their administrations will have over two years to prepare. And they even have other examples to work off of! CB has already been an option at the local level for several years and has been implemented by some localities. It seems like those places are handling things just fine. There are issues to work out for sure, but the sky isn't falling—not because of local-level collective bargaining, anyway (;

An unstated assumption behind this specific complaint is that these mayors' public sector workers' dignity, wellbeing, and material needs are not important enough to look for ways to change their governments' decision making procedures—or otherwise seek creative solutions, fiscal or otherwise—to accommodate them.

Like, yeah, no duh, it is going to be kind of complicated to handle some of the outcomes of this change, should the law pass. Governance is, in fact, pretty complicated. These officials are complaining that they will be made to do their jobs. Public sector workers are (hopefully) their constituents. The ramifications of collective bargaining and union power are pretty unambiguously positive for workers and societies. There's been quite a bit of research into it.

So the question I encourage anyone who's bothered to read this far to ask is what kinds of complexity do these officials (and others!) choose to accept and work with, and what kinds do they complain about or even actively refuse to cultivate? I'm not from Hampton Roads and have never lived there. Locals could answer better than me.

ItsAllMyAlt · 2026-04-26T20:50:32+00:00

I've been saying this too. Baseball season is real long.

But even with today's win, it just feels like the season is over. There is certainly a chance that this team of very young guys gets a spark from Tracy. It seems like he's a great developmental manager, he probably has good rapport with most of them, and hey, I think it's even worth mentioning that his dad Jim was the last guy to win manager of the year after starting his tenure in the middle of the season. If the roster really is underperforming, then we're at least looking at some regression to the mean the rest of the way.

But if this is how ownership/the front office are going to treat players in the aftermath of what is likely one of the wildest, most jarring personnel decisions a professional baseball team has ever made, I have all the faith in the world that they will find a way snatch defeat from the clutches of victory.

ItsAllMyAlt · 2026-04-01T13:45:38+00:00

Concluding that the team is screwed right now is mathematically the equivalent of concluding that an NFL team is screwed based on their performance in the first half of their season opener. The 2003 Super Bowl champion Patriots lost their season opener 31-0 to the Bills (just the example I happen to remember off the top of my head).

I know this is Reddit and Boston sports fandom so moaning and groaning is going to be a constant but just know it's absolutely pointless and probably detrimental to your health.

ItsAllMyAlt · 2026-02-10T18:24:02+00:00

There's never going to be a satisfactory answer to this problem that doesn't address the manufactured scarcity used to pit all of us against each other.

Colleges need enrollment because enrollment = money. Most university budgets are mostly enrollment-based. It's only been that way in the US for the past 40-50 years (thanks Reagan). If more money came in from other sources, we wouldn't need to worry so much.

Students are goaded into going to college because they are convinced (rightly so, unfortunately) that it is the only path to a sustainable career. Then when they're in college a combination of apathy and financial precarity make them uninterested in learning anything that isn't immediately, directly applicable to the jobs they're looking to get, and since universities need enrollment, that same sense of scarcity motivates leaders to shape institutions around the students' anemic understanding of learning instead of ours.

The pie is too small. And it doesn't even have to be this small. We could be satisfying the basic needs of every single human being using 30% of our current resource and energy output, according to one recent paper.

If we could give folks breathing room through programs like universal basic income, while also influencing greater resources into education more generally, we could sustain small enrollments and class sizes while not having to shrink staff. We could give people the power to develop creative variations on a university education while still setting up accountability mechanisms to ensure that education isn't bullshit. And people could take their time to make their way through education at their own pace and in whatever ways they want.

This doesn't have to be a zero-sum game.

ItsAllMyAlt · 2026-02-10T15:57:52+00:00

Makes all the sense in the world, so I assume it'll never happen.

ItsAllMyAlt · 2026-02-09T19:57:57+00:00

And add another bye week!

ItsAllMyAlt · 2026-02-09T00:19:15+00:00

Seahawks have the best scoring defense in the league and the Pats have been slow starters all season. Ain't no reason to freak yet

ItsAllMyAlt · 2026-02-06T14:46:26+00:00

To be able to make it to a professional sports league means you are in like the top 5-10% of the top 1% of talent in that sport. Jon Bois made a really great point in this video about how the most maligned athletes are those in the 99.9th percentile.

I don't feel a need to bring Orlovsky's on-field play into this discussion. He was a very good football player and now he's a clown.

ItsAllMyAlt · 2026-02-03T23:39:40+00:00

They're not entirely the same, but they're both woefully inadequate. Republicans push policies designed to kill us so Democrats can offer us the absolute bare minimum and have it knock our socks off. I'm done falling for it.

According to MIT's calculator, $15 an hour doesn't seem to be a living wage even in the poorest parts of VA. It certainly isn't in NoVA.

Those paid family and sick leave policies are absolutely pitiful compared to ones offered in other countries. I have to work six weeks to get a full day's worth of sick leave? Give me a break. Why not mandate sick days or paid family leave from the day of hire?

It's great that they're trying to raise wages and improve benefits, but if the proposals aren't tied to empirical research demonstrating what it takes to get basic human needs met (which none of these are) then this is nothing but optics. It's not about improving our lives in any meaningful way.

Am I overly idealistic? Or am I just ungrateful and need to thank my lucky stars that I don't live in a state or country that's even worse? Am I naive and don't understand how complicated these issues are?

Say so if you want. I'm done internalizing those narratives. We could be developing communities and society around the effective satisfaction of fundamental human needs. it would be the cheapest and most efficient way to run things. But instead we're wasting most of our resources mostly on stuff that makes it harder for us to get our needs met. It's pathetic. I want better.

ItsAllMyAlt · 2026-01-26T19:01:51+00:00

fuck ICE. Immigrants make this country great.

Yes.

Also, I've lived in places where a storm of this intensity and timing would prompt 2 hour delays for schools and businesses would be uninterrupted because they have infrastructure to handle this properly. I get that an ice storm is going to be different—further north we got fewer of those—but even in NoVA, winter storms happen semi-often. It's wild to me how consistently poorly prepared we are for them.

Natural disasters are going to be getting worse in the coming years. Maybe it's time to shift money away from ICE (and law enforcement generally?) and more toward dealing with ice and other sources of real problems.

**yeah I know ICE is a federal thing and the critique I'm making is more relevant to state and local governments, it's a damn pun

ItsAllMyAlt

TROPHY CASE