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the
day. The
Senate failed to override his veto of the bill
abolishing the estate tax.
No
one, of course, attributed Warner’s win to the
power of his punditry.
Barney
Day, Daily
Press and Roanoke Times columnist, credited it to actions “that warmed the
hearts of Democratic partisans everywhere.”
According to Day, Warner was “right” on
the issue and went after a victory:
He
wined and dined the votes he needed. He begged and
cajoled. He lit the phones up back home,
particularly in a few districts where he needed to
flip votes. He staked out his position emphatically.
He made a case. He worked the process. And he won -
really against the odds.
With
his usual flair for couching his opinions, Day
declared estate tax repeal “ truly idiotic.”
Jeff
Schapiro
of the Richmond
Times-Dispatch didn’t even pause to marvel at
the estate tax veto before identifying a new crusade
for Gov. Warner. Schapiro,
calling the Republicans “smug,” assailed their
barring of in-state tuition breaks for illegal
aliens. Noting
that Warner’s amendments to the measure failed, he
made this suggestion:
Here's
an idea that would make his one-time mentor, former
Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, proud: Veto the bill and
issue an executive order that would put into effect
his standards for protecting the higher education
system and those resident illegal immigrants who
honorably aspire to partake of it.
Schapiro
as much as admitted he was indulging in wishful
thinking:
Waiting
for Gov. Mark R. Warner to get tough with the
General Assembly is like waiting for Godot:
Anticipation yields to the realization that it's
probably not going to happen.
Suck-Up
of the Week
Preston
Bryant,
a Republican Delegate and Roanoke
Times columnist, wrote that Attorney General
Jerry Kilgore “is a man for our state's times. He
knows his job, and he does it.” Bryant praised
Kilgore for his victory over Gov. Warner on
redistricting, his stance on the Republican
eavesdropping case, and for gaining Virginia as the
venue for the first sniper trials.
Barney
Day couldn’t resist taking a shot at his
colleague, alluding to the “pathological adulation
laid on by some of his [Kilgore’s] columnists.”
The
Business of Business Isn’t Higher Ed
Washington
Post
columnist Steven
Pearlstein did a piece on the lack of business
support for higher education in Maryland and
Virginia:
Unlike
in Boston or San Francisco or even Austin, key
players in the Washington corporate community have
not stepped forward and adopted higher education as
their cause, lavishing campuses with money and using
their political muscle to protect them as they would
their own operations. Consider David Packard and
Stanford or Michael Dell and the University of
Texas.
Others
offered different explanations.
Pearlstein quoted George Mason University
President Alan Merton saying, "Around here,
there is
no identifiable business community.
That's the problem."
The man who knows that there is a business
community blamed voters:
At
the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, President Hugh
Keogh explained that while the business community is
concerned about the "long-term
deterioration" in the state's higher-education
system, it is loath to take on what would be a
quixotic campaign to reverse it in the face of an
electorate determined to cut taxes no matter the
consequences.
On
a positive note, at least for those who compare
Virginia to Mississippi, Pearlstein noted a study
that put Maryland at No. 37 and Virginia at No. 28
in terms of state support of public higher education
as a fraction of personal income.
College
Corner, Continued
Virginia’s
Mary Washington College and
Chris
topher
Newport University were named to the list of “100
Most Underrated Colleges” by the Washington
Post’s Jay
Mathews.
Pundits
Draft Bruce Smith in First and Second Round
Former
Virginia Tech and NFL football star Bruce Smith got
a lot of advice from the Roanoke
Times. Smith,
named to the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors by
Governor Warner, was advised by Times
editorial writer Shanna
Flowers to begin attending meetings and do
battle with a Board that eschewed affirmative action
by adopting a “race-neutral” policy.
Radford Professor and Times columnist Reginald
Shareef had contrary advice, mischievously
suggesting that Smith also oppose legacy preferences
and NCAA sports preferences.
Neither
pundit drafting Smith to support their educational
philosophy noted the irony that Smith never earned a
degree from Tech.
Gratuitous
Sexual Reference of the Week
Reader
Valerie
L’Herrou took exception to sexual references
concerning the French in last week’s Paul Goldman
column. This
week, A.
Barton Hinkle’s hilarious Times-Dispatch
send-off of the recently released “Guide to
Virginia Protocol and Traditions” offers a
Virginia sexual reference:
Recently
I was invited by my cousin Cleetis to go hunting
around Tazewell for the weekend. What is the order
of precedence?
Order
of precedence before the hunt: Cousin Cleetis, his
immediate kinfolk, you, your immediate kinfolk,
Cleetis' good buddies, your good buddies. After the
hunt: The guy who bagged the most game, the guy who
drank the most beer, the guy who skipped the hunting
and bagged Charlene, everyone else.
--
April 7, 2003
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