Good Morning, RVA: Spring, sprang, sprung

Soak up the sun, you guys!

March 31, 2015; 6:59 AM • by Ross Catrow

Photo by: sandy’s dad

Good morning, RVA! It’s 38 °F now, but highs today of 72 °F, y’all! In fact, there’s not a day this week with a forecasted high that does not start with a six or a seven. SPRING! Make sure you bring your sunglasses, because it’s gonna be a bright, bright, sun-shiny day.

Water cooler

Lucky for you, Strawberry Street Cafe is sponsoring pay-wall-free access to the RTD, because I’m about to blow through your monthly allotment of page views–hold on to your butts. Sunday’s RTD had this great piece by Carol Hazard about Richmond’s business, professional, and occupational license tax. If you own a business in the city, like RVANews for example, each year you must pay $0.58 for every $100 of gross revenue. Surrounding counties, however, charge almost half that and exempt the first $100,000 of revenue. I know, I know, taxes are zzzzz, but if we to want change something to encourage small businesses to call Richmond their home, this is certainly a candidate. Also, there’s an anonymous follow-up editorial in today’s RTD with a sick, possibly Stone Brewing Co.-related burn in the final paragraph.

Katy Burnell Evans has this incredible coverage of the School Board and City Council working together to restore funding to Richmond Public Schools. While Council acknowledges that finding the extra money is going to be a challenge, it seems like the two groups are on the same page. Now it’s the mayor’s turn.

Richmond police are reporting the city’s 5th homicide, this one on the 2100 block of Bradford Road.

County lawyers are getting involved in Sweet Briar’s closing. An extended and difficult process, whatever the results may be, now seems inevitable.

Governor MacAuliffe wrote an open letter to Indiana businesses who think that the new law legalizing anti-gay discrimination is super dumb. He invites them to set up shop in “open and welcoming” Virginia–which, like, whoa guy. We’re definitely making some good progress on that front, but I’m not quite sure we’re there yet.

Vox has seven video clips to help you get to know Trevor Noah, new host of the Daily Show.

Sports!

• Caps host the Hurricanes tonight at 7:00 PM.

What to expect

Today on RVANews:

• April is just waiting to fill you with live music.
• Pittsburgh sounds like a great weekend getaway for your family.
• Yoko Ono is sending some of John Lennon’s art to Richmond, no joke!
• We’re getting close to the 150-year anniversary of the Fall of Richmond. There will be many ways you can communally contemplate.

This morning’s longread

I hate your censorship, but I’ll defend to the death your right to censor

It’s a truism of free expression that if you only defend speech you agree with, you don’t believe in free expression. That doesn’t mean you have to defend the content of the expression: it means you have to support the right of people to say stupid, awful things. You can and should criticize the stupid, awful things. It’s the distinction between the right to express a stupid idea, and the stupidity of the idea itself.

Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow says some sensible things about the freedom of speech.

This morning’s Instagram

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March 31, 2015 6:59 AM 1