- People who rent homes (AMG, Albo Hammers Renters Again & AMG, Albo Hates Renters)
- Diabetics & Quadriplegics (AMG, Albo Hates Diabetics and Quadriplegics)
- PTA Moms and their cookie sales (AMG, Dave Albo v. The PTA);
- Children in subsidized childcare (AMG, Is Albo Offering to Babysit 1,900 Children);
- Child rape victims (AMG, Dave Albo Sides With Child Molesters Again);
- People who aren't wealthy (Del. Dave Albo - "my people are wealthy") (AMG, Robbin the Hood for Middleburg);
- Undocumented Immigrants (AMG, Does Albo Want to Make Money Off Illegal Immigration? & Albo Fills the Jail & Busts the Bank);
- His Clients (AMG, The Pot Calls the Kettle Black, see also Abuser Fees).
Yes, Del. Dave Albo has introduced legislation to ease our minds by making it a misdemeanor (felony on a second offense) to carry a concealed boxcutter. Yes, no long will carpetlayers be able to keep their weapons in their pockets, they must carry them in the open.
Instead of our own analysis, we bring you this email sent to Albo Must Go which we simply quote the text below:
"Delegate Albo not thinking about citizens" in the manual trades? Why would that be?This proposed legislation is preposterous. Dave Albo now wants to make virtually every roofer, carpet layer, and handyman in the state into a criminal. If this law passes, a roofer could not legally carry a boxcutter onto a roof in his pocket or toolbag. He would somehow need to keep it in plain view; not hidden by his hand or clothing. Likewise, a carpet layer could not put his carpet knife (aka boxcutter) into a pocket or toolbelt without violating the concealed weapons law.
Boxcutters are not the only tool which could potentially be misused as a weapon. Large screwdrivers, sharpened awls, pruning saws, and a pipe wrench can all be used by a criminal to inflict injuries to the same or greater degree as a boxcutter. Many tradesmen use boxcutters and other such tools in their line of work. They typically carry these tools in trouser or coat pockets, toolbelts, or other places about their person.
On the job, en route to a work site, or after hours, it's not uncommon to carry small tools including box cutters in one's pockets. Evidently Del. Albo is not thinking about citizens in these lines of work.
I am not employed in any of these professions, but I do carry a small tool bag behind the front seat of my automobile. This tool bag contains--among other things--a box cutter. Because the location of the bag makes it readily at hand about my person, under this law I could be charged and convicted of carrying a concealed weapon, the same as if it contained a loaded handgun.
- Del. Dave Albo, Washington Post, Jan. 1, 2004
Oh yeah. Well, perhaps the carpetlayers, roofers and handymen ougtht to start a PAC. Delegate Albo seems to listen to those. . . .
3 comments:
I thought this had to be an exaggeration or misunderstanding, but verified it on the VA Legislative information system. There's a utility knife/box cutter in my car's glove compartment at this very moment. So if my car is ever searched by the police, which has happened before when it was stolen, I could be convicted of the same crime as if I had a loaded 44 Magnum in the glove compartment. Ironically, I could get a permit to have the handgun in there but not a box cutter, because Virginia's concealed weapons permits only apply to firearms.
Aren't claw hammers and hand axes much more dangerous and more commonly used by criminals? A box cutter or utility knife is so small that it's going to be concealed just about any way you carry it. Would we all be safer if everyone were forced to hang their box cutters/utility knives from a string around the neck or dangling from our belts?
Would hardware stores be able to sell box cutters? If the cashier at Home Depot put a box cutter in a bag, would that make them an accessory? I haven't seen anything in the mail from Dave Albo about this proposed law. It's got me completely baffled what is going on in his head. This man is allegedly my elected representative, yet I have no idea what he thinks he is doing. (Is this his idea of public service?) How does Del. Albo propose to inform the general citizenship and especially trade workers that they can no longer carry box cutters? Will he propose a special concealed box cutter permit? Has he even thought this through?
I'm ashamed to say I voted for Dave Albo back before his $3,000 traffic ticket craziness. It's scary to think that we are paying him to write these nutty laws, and he was just elected to a new term. Too bad we can't have recalls.
Living in truly close quarters
Sunday, Feb 10, 2008 - 12:08 AM Updated: 02:47 AM
By JEFF E. SCHAPIRO
TIMES-DISPATCH COLUMNIST
Had I known earlier, I'd have sent over a pie.
Dave Albo, the Fairfax Republican who heads the House courts committee, is a neighbor during General Assembly sessions. For about $950, he rents a room in the handsome brick house of lobbyist Fred Helm.
Another delegate, Chris Saxman of Staunton, stays with a fellow GOP lawmaker who's married to a lobbyist. Saxman would crash with Sen. Ryan McDougle and his wife, Bea, at their house in Hanover, but Chris and Ryan now bach it at a McDougle riverfront condo. As for rent, Saxman says only, "we have an arrangement."
This is not intended as a post-Jack Abramoff exercise in political voyeurism. Rather it is a lesson in the intimacy that can guide state affairs, and the blurry line between being friends and being friendly.
Because these accommodations may defy categorization -- are they gifts or business deals that should be made public? -- they illustrate the porousness of an ethics law that largely depends on self-policing.
It's compelled Meade Spotts, who lobbies for convenience stores and trash haulers, to stop renting to legislators an apartment at his spread on the James. He rented to two senators. No more: Spotts wants to avoid the appearance of impropriety.
Albo has known Helm since they were undergrads at U.Va. 20 years ago. Helm wrote a recommendation for Albo and his wife, Rita, when the couple adopted their son. Albo and Helm roomed together before Helm quit DMV to lobby.
At that point, Albo says, he felt it necessary to pay rent -- "because I'm not allowed to accept gifts."
That depends on how one reads the law. It doesn't ban gifts outright but requires disclosure of those worth $50 or more. The law bars goodies from someone whose interests may be substantially affected by an official's performance and where a gift's timing and nature call into question the official's impartiality.
Albo says business doesn't bring Helm before the courts committee, which oversees judges and the criminal and civil laws they interpret. But Helm, pumping for such clients as cable TV and a prospective uranium mine, has in his tenant a potentially invaluable source of legislative intel.
Short of a lawmaker's vote, inside information is coin of the realm. Helm insists he and Albo are just so busy, they rarely talk.
The loquacious Saxman and Bea McDougle would seem to confer a lot -- not always in Richmond, not always on politics. Their families have been close since Saxman and Ryan McDougle came to the legislature in 2002. At the McDougles' in Hanover, Saxman had the run of the place --he even entertained guests, including cooking dinner for a reporter for The Washington Post. (Not that there's a connection, but that reporter wrote a 2004 piece about the tobacco lobby that made mention of one of its members: Bea McDougle.)
Her firm threw a fundraiser for Saxman at its Tobacco Row office. It won a marketing contract from a trade group of which Saxman, who runs a bottled-water company, is chairman.
Saxman is anything but a reliable vote for two McDougle clients: the state's only horse track and payday lenders. He opposes expanded gambling and helped write a proposed clampdown on lenders.
So even families disagree?
Saxman puts it another way, paraphrasing the late Speaker A.L. Philpott: "If you can't take their money, drink their wine and eat their food, you shouldn't be down here."
Contact Jeff E. Schapiro at (804) 6496814 or jschapiro@timesdispatch.com. He provides news analysis each Friday at 8:33 a.m. on WCVE radio (88.9 FM).
I am a maintance supervisor, I keep my toolbelt in my car. I don't wear it most if the time but need it handy. I need my boxcutter and all my tools handy. I keep a Leatherman tool on my belt and most of the time some kind of tools in my pocket. I sometime keep my permited .357 in my glove box(night service calls) Now the Evil that is Albo wants me charged if I have a boxcutter or similar iten in my pocket?
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