Dave “Douchebag” Albo - A F#@%ing Piece of Road Kill!
Got your attention now? Good. I’m a bit hungover with as little as five hours of sleep under my belt so I’m not feeling real subtle at this moment as indicated by these alternate titles swirling through my mind Dirk Diggler style: “Virginia Drivers Getting Raped and Fucked in the Ass By Republican Delegate,” or maybe, “Republican Delegate Fucking Virginia Drivers in the Ass One By One, or “Out of State Drivers Immune to Virginia’s Draconian Ass Fucking.”
No matter how you slice it, it essentially boils down to one thing - highway robbery! And don’t think it can’t happen in your state. Here is where it all began:
Virginia Introduces $3550 Speeding Ticket
Virginia legislator introduces new speeding ticket tax that boosts penalties beyond $3550, driving business to his traffic law firm.
Virginia motorists convicted of minor traffic violations will face a new, multi-year tax beginning July 1. Led by state Delegate David B. Albo (R-Springfield), lawmakers slipped a driver responsibility tax into a larger transportation funding bill signed by Governor Tim Kaine (D) in April. Albo, a senior partner in the Albo & Oblon, LLP traffic law firm, can expect to see a significant increase in business as motorists seek to protect their wallet from traffic tickets that come with assessments of up to $3000 in addition to an annual point tax that tops out at $700 a year for as long as the points remain.
“The purpose of the civil remedial fees imposed in this section is to generate revenue,” the new law states. (Virginia Code 46.2-206.1)
Driving as little as 15 MPH over the limit on an interstate highway now brings six license demerit points, a fine of up to $2500, up to one year in jail, and a new mandatory $1050 tax. The law also imposes an additional annual fee of up to $100 if a prior conviction leaves the motorist with a balance of eight demerit points, plus $75 for each additional point (up to $700 a year). The conviction in this example remains on the record for five years.
Other six-point convictions include “failing to give a proper signal,” “passing a school bus” or “driving with an obstructed view.” The same $1050 assessment applies, but the conviction remains on the record for eleven years. Although the amount of the tax can add up quickly, the law forbids judges from reducing or suspending it in any way. The tax applies only to Virginia residents, so that out-of-state motorists only need to pay the regular ticket amount. Michigan, New Jersey, New York and Texas also impose a somewhat more modest driver responsibility tax which they apply to out-of-state residents.Update: View which legislators support a repeal, link to online petition.
The bill went into effect July 1st.
Seems that former frat boy president Dave Albo (and here is where I should be judicious and keep the ad hominem in check but let me just put it succinctly - frat boy? PUK!), once a man with limited funds that he had to throw a forty keg beer party just to raise money for his own campaign - has long forgotten his earlier days of financial struggle and hardship.
“I started my law firm right out of law school. Back then we ate a lot of beans and rice while we struggled to start a business.” - Dave Albo
Yeah, ok, Dave. Well, let me tell you something - I for one will never forget the days of making just under $18,000 a year and the dread of trying to make ends meet. I used to be so fucking poor I had to nuke frozen vegetables for lunch. I feel for anyone - from the average college kid to the struggling single mother, to the lower income families and minimum wage workers - who will be severely affected by the sort of draconian laws that could wipe out their entire savings because some asshole cop is having a bad day and wants to dispense some whoop ass with his pen. What might be a minor inconvenience to the wealthy could be a catastrophic burden to the average citizen and I find it disheartening that many if not a majority of our legislators only care about brazenly making laws that benefit them or people like them. These laws are not designed to maximize public safety on the roads, rather it is nothing more than a deceitful and calculating way to raise taxes. Do politicians think we are really that stupid?
Since Albo wants to play tough I think it’s time we go ahead and make his day as well. Here is what you can do to stop or alleviate the insanity that is Dave “Douchebag” Albo!
- Cancel your AAA membership and here’s why - I canceled my membership just last week! Don’t forget to tell them why.
- Sign this online petition and let your voice be heard - that you refuse to get fucked by sleazy lawyer Dave Albo!
- If possible avoid driving through Virginia at all. Unfortunately I live here but I am adding DC to my apartment search list.
- Send a letter of protest to Dave Albo’s personal and law firm’s websites. Let them know you’re on to their backhanded greed driven scheme to line their pockets with the blood sweat and tears of hardworking Virginia citizens!
- Create a blog about him. Apparently Albo thinks bloggers [to paraphrase] have been irresponsible. Nothing should inflame him more than a new batch cropping up to call him on his bullshit. I tell you, it must suck to be one of the biggest political douchebags on the internet.
- Boo him off the stage at one of his music gigs! Believe it or not, Albo has a band called Planet Albo (”a band of Republican Delegates and government affairs reps,” according to him - wow, one can only imagine the bizarre implications) and his wife is the tambourine player so don’t hesitate to pull her aside and remind her that her husband is not just fucking her, he’s fucking the whole state of Virginia!
Above - Albo playing guitar at his ”Albapalooza” fundraiser.
- Boycott his firm and picket the front of the building and bombard them with phone calls at:
Albo & Oblon, LLP
2200 Clarendon Blvd., Ste. 1201
Arlington, VA 22201
(703) 312-0410
Desperate times call for desperate measures so if none of the above proves successful then proceed to uncover the dirt on him - hopefully the kind that is found in the closet. Ok, I’m joking…I’m think…however, after viewing his band pics I wouldn’t be surprised if the guy was growing a “dream garden” in some secret nursery.
Hmm. I wonder what the fine is for getting busted with a rolled one. I’ll ponder this when I crawl back into bed.
I read about this on Reddit a few weeks ago. What a douchebag! I guess I’ll have to be cautious while driving when I go to Virginia next week…
HOLY SHIT! I used to live in Virginia. My mom’s side of the family ALL live in Virginia. I was planning on visiting Tidewater and Richmond to give my wife the grand tour. If he manages to get that insane law passed, I’ll definitely have to cancel. Out here in Georgia, I regularly do 15-35 over the limit (as do 75% of the others). I wouldn’t be able to keep myself in check up there.
Also.. online petitions don’t work. It’s been proven year after year. Direct letters of protest are the best way.
Yes, you should be cautious and I am not speaking out of paranoia but I have noticed a significant increase in the number of cops patrolling the area. And I tell you, it sucks.
It’s like living in a police state. Literally.
One of my joys in life is driving fast to loud music with the wind in my hair and the air hitting my face. I am now making it my mission to make Dave the Douchebag’s life miserable. I am not doing it just for me, I am doing it for the people!
So, what sort of business do we have going on in Virginia anyway? Just being nosy!
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Abby, but the law passed July 1st. I should have made that clear.
Nice to see cops busy hassling good citizens in order to collect thousand dollar fines instead of going after real criminals. After all, why should they, you can make much more money off hounding the middle and upper-class with draconian fines than you can risking your life busting crack houses and stopping real bad guys.
I don’t often use the word juvenile term douchebag but it keeps coming to mind when I look at him.
Can you believe the nerve of this guy? He’s also available to defend the very same people he’s trying to entrap.
You ought to see the circus that goes on when someone gets pulled over for speeding. You will often see not one, not two, but three cops cars parked on the side of the road. You’re thinking - they must have a lot of time on their hands to send three officers to shake down one person.
We don’t call them the Arlington Gestapo for nothing.
Let me tell you, I’d hate to be him walking into a restaurant these days for fear of people spitting in my food.
Albo’s married? Sheeeit, I remember when the punk was preening about Richmond, proud of his status among th emost eligible bachelors in the General Assembly when I was covering state government. He was a helium-weight then and he’s still in the inert-gas end of the periodic table now.
Well hell, this explains it all right here . . .
(from young Mr. Albo’s own website)
“I graduated UVA in 1984 with a degree in Economics. Then I attended law school at the University of Richmond in 1988.”
Economics, which means he slept through most of his classes.
And a law degree from U of R, which means he was bred to screw over anybody outside a 2-yard buffer around Chestefield County and the better parts of Richmond.
Yeah, I know very little about politics or economics but I know a whole bunch about preening jackasses. And I can totally see him doing that.
So, are people pretty pissed in your neck of the woods or what?
Everybody. And cops are slightly scared of pushing the issue around here, if what I’m hearing from the local courthouse has any truth.
I read that Front Royal is going to fight back by not enforcing the laws. Should be interesting! Since you’re a resident, answer me this - where did all the govt money go over the years?
I remember when I thought the personal property tax was the devil. Still somewhat do.
Got a few months for the history? Short form - when George Allen was gov., he decided it would be a great cost cutting move to cut half of VDOT’s professional engineering staff, which had actually done a pretty decent job of engineering, monitoring and controlling costs on road projects.
Those that got cut ended up as consultants at various civil and transportation engineering firms across the Commonwealth. When VDOT and Allen realized that they didn’t have enough in-house staff to handle oversight on new projects, guess who got hired as consultants at anywhere from 150 to 300 percent of what they were making as VDOT employees?
But that’s only part of tonight’s offer . . . .
Back in the early 80’s, then gov. Gerald Baliles got the General Assembly to authorize bonds to build some major transportation projects across the state - before Allen came along. It got some things jump-started, but there was no coherent plan to follow up with a sustained transportation funding plan. If you fund roads with bonds, one of two things have to happen - you charge tolls to pay for the roads, or you use future tax revenues.
So, add Allen’s fiscal brilliance to that situation and fast fwd. to Big Jim Gilmore who did two things - he created a halfassed scheme to cut back on the personal property tax on cars, and he politicized the state Dept. of Transportation.
Gilmore badly estimated how much it would cost the state to phase out the car tax and reimburse localities for the tax cut. When I was covering the situation for papers in SWVA, the first couple of years’ estimated impact on state tax revenues ended up being lowballed by about 30 percent, or the state had to fork over more than $1 billion a year to city and county governments instead of the $800 million Gilmore said his plan would cost.
It gets better.
While localities were getting reimbursed for the car tax revenue they couldn’t collect, their reimbursements were not adjusted for inflation or for any increase in tax assessment values. So, if you’re a local government, what revenue sources do you have left to make up for the difference? Real estate taxes or made-up fees.
Remember that Albo is a Republican and that he came to office right about the time all this started. He was a plebe and not very influential or smart, but ignorance is no excuse when it comes to culpability . . .
While Gilmore plays his shitty little populist game about how he’s cutting taxes for the little man, he’s also using VDOT at the time to reward politically loyal legislators by giving road projects in their districts priority.
But Gilmore’s vision of a well-paved Virginia was hitting a perfect storm of problems.
Road costs - once monitored and controlled fairly well by a professional VDOT - are starting to get out of hand because they are often of half-assed design or poor planning for long-term trends. Take a drive through the mixing bowl in Springifield even today and let me know how much you enjoy the new construction.
As the state found itself paying more and more to cobble up its share of the car tax back to localities, that also impacted available General Fund revenues for transportation.
And subsequent transportation bond issues that were supposed to pay for improved and new road construction? Well, between higher costs and project mismanagement, let’s just say that several projects began to run out of money before they even came up for final design and commencement of construction.
And by the time Gilmore’s final year in office rolled around, that was th etime that the good folks at Moody’s and Standard and Poor started to realize that the state’s finances were being managed (and I use the term loosely) by a bunch of idiots and an extremist no-tax Republican wing that had managed to take the General Assembly hostage. In many ways it was a preview of the Bush administration as more moderate Republcans found themselves aligning with old-guard Democrats whenever possible.
And the politicization of VDOT had gotten to the point where Gilmore’s chief of staff, Boyd Marcus, had actually set up shop at VDOT to ensure that agency’s political reliability when Gilmore went out and said that he was solving the state’s transportation problems.
The best that Mark Warner, Whitt Clement (state Transportation Sec.) and Phillip Shucet (VDOT commissioner) were able to do after Gilmore was to stop the hemmorhage of transportation money.
And that’s been the situation through Kaine’s administration, with Northern Va. and Tidewater being the two main contenders for any future transportation plan while legisltors come up with any scheme possible to show that they are tough on getting transportation money to solve gridlock and road needs.
And that ultimately leads back to a fact of political life in Va - where you’re from matters as much as what party you’re in.
This is oversimplified in a lot of ways, but it’s actually the short history of how and why your roads are crap since 1980.
Whoa! July 1! I wonder how much they’ve managed to pull in since it’s been almost 2 months. I was planning to go up there mostly because that’s where my “better” memories are from, and my wife would like to see the place. I lived in Tidewater during my teenage years and my grandparents lived in Richmond as long as I can remember. My grandfather was a professor at U of R, then was curator of the Laura Robins Gallery. My grandparents’ house is on U of R property. After my grandfather passed away, my grandmother had to move within a certain number of years.
Thanks for the info, FFE. I had no idea that’s how transportation got in such a mess up there.
Where and what years in Tidewater? I grew up there from 62-65 and 72-79
… Just visiting family.
If they roll that much bank from a ticket, I don’t see this Virginianer being able to sweet talk her way out of one now…bummer
It wasn’t that long ago. I lived in Virginia Beach from 90-91 and Norfolk from 93-96.
FFE, you’ve overwhelmed me so much with your last response that I’ve run away and have yet to come back…
History’s a bitch, and it’s even worse when you’re a former reporter.
I like this serious, civic minded side of you, Stiletto.
Don’t let the pretty packaging fool you. Beneath the tight wrapping there’s a bomb waiting to explode and I ain’t talking about one that’s gastronomically induced.
Yo Valliant - can you log on to your myspace page sometime and add me? Thanks!
FFE:
“Road costs - once monitored and controlled fairly well by a professional VDOT - are starting to get out of hand because they are often of half-assed design or poor planning for long-term trends. Take a drive through the mixing bowl in Springifield even today and let me know how much you enjoy the new construction.”
Jesus Christ! That’s what I’ve been thinking all along…”poor planning for long-term trends.” I swear sometimes I think 411 operators and Dominion Electric employees are smarter than some of these politicians, and we know that’s not saying much.