Not to disrespect Senator Norment's financial acumen in any way, he has a beauty of a scam going where he gets paid as a State Senator, as the Commissioner of Accounts for Virginia, is a lawyer at Kaufman and Canoles, P.C., and a professor at the College of William and Mary.
State Senators don't get paid much, but lawyers do; the Commissioner of Accounts is a 6 figure salaried job. Professors at the College of William and Mary? Well, some get paid more than others, but guess who decides how much the college as a whole gets? Did you guess the State Senate? Bingo!!
As co-chair of the Virginia Senate Finance Committee and majority leader, Norment has an outsize role in setting funding levels for state schools like William & Mary. In 2009, the Virginia Pilot reported that Norment was receiving $160,000 a year to teach two courses and do legal work for the school — a cozy arrangement that the paper noted would allow him to “qualify for a significantly bigger pension when he retires.”
Currently, Virginia is in, I don't even know what to call it, a flux? A clusterflux? A ratflux? The top three Democrats are under attack, two accused of racism, one of sexual misconduct. The racism and sexism is hard to address without looking at the big picture of Virginia's history.
Herb Jones says:
"The political drama still develops in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Folks from all sides are calling for resignations. The history of Virginia rears it's ugly head. People continue to be angry for our collective history and experiences that occurred in the past".
I want people to really understand what this means. The first legal sanctioning of slavery in America/ English colonies happened in a Virginia Court, as many of the laws governing slavery did. The English colonies/America largely had their own local "slave codes", mostly based on the codes of either Barbados or Virginia.
In 1662 the Virginia royal colony approved a law adopting the principle of partus sequitur ventrum. The change institutionalized the skewed power relationships between slave owners and slave women, freed white men from the legal responsibility to acknowledge or financially support their mixed-race children, and somewhat confined the open scandal of mixed-race children and miscegenation to within the slave quarters. Furthermore, females of breeding age were supposed to be kept pregnant, producing more slaves to sell. (If you can stomach it, read everything at this link.)
This is the history of Virginia that everyone living there today grew up with. In case they forget, they have Monument Avenue to remind them, and over 200 streets, schools and buildings with names honoring the confederacy.
From Herb Jones :
We do have choices: to dwell in the past or discuss our history, learn from the unacceptable behaviors, and heal.
The opportunity to grow from tragic adversity is a choice: When my mother was 9-years-old growing up in Ware Shoals, South Carolina, she was called in to their home after playing, only to be confronted with the horrifying news that her father had just been lynched and his body burned.
My mother choose not to live the rest of her life full of anger and hatred nor did she blame America for what happened to her father. In my mother’s unparalleled wisdom, she consciously chose to share this fact of our family heritage with my three brothers and me after we had graduated from college, started our careers and matured into adulthood.
She knew what would have happened if shared this with us while we were rambunctious teenagers. She was a woman of wisdom and forgiveness. She was the kindest, sweetest, and most generous person I’ve ever known. My brothers and I strive to emulate our mother and father in how we live our lives.
Given the events over the past weeks, if perfection is the new standard for service, then we are all in trouble. In 1984, Ralph Northam was the product of his environment, the eastern shore of Virginia, one of the most racist areas in Virginia. But this was 35 years ago."
Contrast that with Tommy Norment, who, as a student at the Virginia Military Institute, was the managing editor for the Bomb. Norment edited the yearbook with the racist photo's! Norment currently teaches an interesting class about the confederacy at The College of William and Mary.
"...former students say that he routinely made racially insensitive and transphobic comments, forced students of color to defend Confederate iconography, and even defended the university’s defunct Brafferton Indian School that educated Native American kids — often without their family’s consent — in the 1700s..."
This is 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, not 35 years ago. This is about morality and ethics, of which Norment seems to have few.
Virginia is one of two states where Judges aren’t elected, they are appointed,
judges are selected by a majority vote of the Virginia General Assembly (the combined house of delegates and senate) ballotpedia.org/...
I can't wrap my brain around the fact that Norment can walk into a courtroom as a lawyer for defense when he is a part of the state body which appoints judges. How can that be a fair trial?
Norment fought for $184 million to help enforce pot laws. Have a joint? Go to jail. Meanwhile there were 20 years of backlogged rape kits that the state couldn't come up with $2 million to process.
Norment tried to get penalties for sex offenders lowered. Five years for sexually abusing a child seemed too much for him, two years was his suggestion. "He has blocked common sense legislation on health care, equal rights, criminal justice reforms, regulation of adult use of cannabis, taxes, and has demonstrated himself to be an unapologetic racist" , says Herb Jones.
The total opposite of Herb Jones, who served his country for 30 years in the military, has served his state for 12 years already, and still wants to serve. When asked how he'll win his election for State Senator in VA 3rd SD says "By knocking on doors and talking to people. People who aren't rich. I understand them and will work to create legislation that address's their needs."
Everything I write, including, but not limited to, my name, belongs to solely to me, Tracy B Ann