Now
we hear that Gov. Mark R. Warner is putting off
announcing the particulars of his tax restructuring
initiative until after this year’s legislative
races. Big mistake. The governor may avoid
turning the November election into a partisan
referendum on his proposals, but he still may not
like the result. Pumped up by electoral victories last
year, the anti-tax wing of the Republican Party is moving into the rhetorical vacuum. The
insurgents are eager to turn the election into a
referendum on their
no-tax-increase agenda.
Virginians
desperately need to engage in a conversation over the structure
and level of state and local taxes -- but that's not the
debate we're likely to get. As the discussion is
shaping up, the
rebels will argue for tax cuts, citing the steady
growth of state and local government spending
through the 1990s. Their opponents will squirm
and wiggle – no one will actually endorse tax
hikes publicly -- while noting under their
breath the need to fund priorities such as education
and transportation. In
sum, fall
2003 will become a re-hash of the same, tattered
raise-taxes-no-cut-them palaver we’ve been hearing
for the past decade.
Totally absent
is any recognition of the complex interplay between
taxes, incomes and the cost of living.
What
Virginians crave most isn’t lower
taxes, I would argue, so much as higher
income after taxes. Citizens hate income tax
hikes because they reduce disposable income. Cutting
taxes is popular because it puts money back into
peoples' pockets. But there are other ways to
bolster disposable income: (1) raise wages, salaries
and profits, and (2) lower the cost of living so
peoples' incomes buy them more.
In
theory, then, investing $1 billion in education,
transportation or other state programs that boost
economic productivity would be worthwhile if it
bolstered profits, wages and salaries by, say, $2
billion. Likewise, investing $1 billion in revamping
the state Medicaid program would be worthwhile if it
reduced Virginians’ medical insurance premiums by
$2 billion.
More >>
Koelemay's
Kosmos
Here
Comes the Sun
The
sun finally shined on Virginia this week, and lots
of new mothers may be naming their baby boys
Ray.
It
is almost impossible now to remember the drought
conditions in Virginia
a year ago. Creeks and rivers dried up, reservoirs
shrank, dust and sun scorch were everywhere.
Mouths got so dry that tongues stuck in cheeks.
One thing Virginians learned for
sure in sun-dried
2002 was the simple truth that the heat, not the
humidity, was responsible for their misery.
But
that was before six months of wet, wet cold, wet
cool, just plain wet. Something happened in the
autumn season last year that shoved the sun and
the dry days into the shadows. It rained and
snowed, rained and stormed, rained and drizzled so
many times that Virginians started counting their
animals by twos. How bad was it? Some Dads stopped
calling their boys “Son.” How bad?
Cheerleaders lead crowds with shouts of “Ra,
Ra.”
By
the first day of June 2003, an AOL online
“American Pulse” poll had over 1.5 million
Internet users responding to a question as to how
they would characterize their spring: 59 percent
said “soggy,” while only 23 percent answered
“sweet.” The 16 percent who answered
“sweltering” obviously were from the planet
Venus. But the widespread reoccurrence of
significant sunshine this week in Virginia,
including a glorious illumination of Virginia Beach’s
broad, new sandy expanse on the weekend, provides
a great opportunity to look back and establish
what really happened.
A
Losing Strategy
Every
election year, political consultants counsel
politicians to play to the middle. But what wins
elections is voter turnout spurred by sharp,
issue-driven campaigns.
Virginia
Republicans can't afford to forget what Democrats at
the national level are now recognizing. Blandness
doesn't win elections. Sharp, issue-driven campaigns
do.
Even
with their recent successes, Republicans shouldn't
be smug about elections this year and beyond. The
voters have shown that they will respond to a hard
message, often confounding political pundits in the
process.
Candidates
who listen to consultants' advice that they pursue
the "safe" course of playing to moderates
may regret that strategy. In an election year
without a statewide election, it is particularly
important for candidates to think about turnout.
Turnout is a function of many factors, but the most
important is message.
Campaigns
that don't deal with controversial issues aren't
likely to generate high turnout. On the other hand,
what are perceived as nasty, negative campaigns are
usually low-turnout elections.
The
important point for a candidate is not whether
overall turnout is high or low. The key is whether
that candidate's supporters turn out in sufficient
numbers to assure his or her victory.
More >>
Rebel
with a Cause
Fiscal
Straight Jacket
Candidates
Wilder, Warner bought my strategy of honest talk on
fiscal issues. Terry, Beyer didn't. Now comes 2005.
VA's budget is not "balanced"; it
has a $4.5 billion structural deficit.
Behind
Virginia's growing financial woes is a ballooning
deficit of candor. My analysis of the state's true
financial condition was the basis of candidate
Warner's winning fiscal message, the one we put into
writing on the key pages of his Action Plan for
Virginia. Since then, the "structural
deficit" -- the sum total of all the gimmicks,
fixes, embedded fiscal time-bombs and off-the-books
debt that has been used to "balance"
current budgets at the cost to future budgets -- has
grown to at least $4,500,000,000 and surely
many hundreds of millions higher.
I
have not been given access to the state's official
books. Our elected officials have long been
promising "truth in budgeting." But
if the governor, House Speaker Bill Howell,
R-Fredericksburg, Senate Finance Chairman John
Chichester, R-Fredericksburg, House Appropriations
Chair Vincent, R-McLean, Secretary of Finance John
Bennett, or anyone else advising either the governor
or the General Assembly on fiscal matters want to
disagree with the thrust of the analysis to follow,
then let them give me a chance to review the state's
financial books.
They will not, indeed can not. Despite months of
promising just such honest talk, our state's
political leaders have put Virginia into a
tightening fiscal straitjacket that would be the
envy of the weavers in Hans Christian Anderson's
fable The Emperors New Clothes. Their claim
that the state's budget is "balanced" is
made out of whole cloth.
Unfortunately, the editorial boards of too many of
our state's newspapers, led by the usual voices, are
intent on focusing on a three letter word - TAX - as
if raising taxes in 2004 or 2005 and giving this
crowd in Richmond more money is a sure fix for this
gapping Structural Deficit. They still don't get it:
higher taxes is only a guarantee of higher taxes.
More
>>
Virginia
Review
Earth
Day Revisited
Environmental
quality is getting better -- and will continue to
do so as long as we safeguard the institutions
that create wealth and support the advance of
science and technology.
My
children recently participated in Earth Day
assignments at school. According to the curriculum,
the environment is a mess, humans constitute
environmental dangers, global warming is upon us and
we face deteriorating water and air quality. Our
familiar way of life is threatened by resource
depletion, urban sprawl, and growing mountains of
trash. We are awash in human-generated carcinogens,
and so on and so forth.
While
friends of liberty can be glad this Earth Day
nonsense is over for another year, they can hardly
be pleased with the state of environmental education
in our schools. Perhaps it is time for parents to
sit down with their kids to present an alternative
view of the state of the planet. Here are some of
the points I try to make in discussions with my
children.
-
By
most measures of environmental quality, things
are getting better.
We are living longer and healthier lives. Child
mortality rates are down. Standards of living
continue to improve, even for the poor.
Educational and cultural opportunities abound.
American enterprise remains creative and
energetic. Social mobility is high. Per capita
disposable income continues to increase.
Available per capita living space continues to
rise. Our water and air continue to become
cleaner. Age-corrected cancer rates are falling.
More
>>
Guest
Column: Mike Thompson
Scuttling
the Ghost Fleet
Seventy
aging warships at the mouth of the James River are
an environmental disaster waiting to happen. Bay
Bridge Enterprises is backing a proposal to convert
them to scrap.
An
environmental disaster of unknown consequences
drifts toward reality at the environmentally
sensitive mouth of the James River.
Seventy
old naval vessels, retired from active service, are
quietly moored in the James
River
off of Fort
Eustis.
This fleet of slowly deteriorating ships is
conveniently called “The Reserve Fleet.” But in reality vast numbers of these once
powerful war machines are rusting away; their stored
oil
and chemicals are waiting to ooze out into the
James and then empty into the Chesapeake
Bay.
The
common reference to this rotting fleet is “The
Ghost Fleet,” as it is only a wisp of what these
ships were in the past.
From a distance
in the light of the moon or in the morning fog,
these aging vessels appear like a fleet of imposing
war vessels ready to fight for our freedom.
But any fight has long since departed these
wraiths of the sea.
The
Ghost Fleet, managed by the U.S. Marine
Administration (MARAD), poses a real danger from
catastrophic oil spills and chemical spills. A whole
Devil’s brew of contaminants could severely
endanger the mouth of the James
River,
Chesapeake Bay
and surrounding waters. Imagine the impact of a huge hurricane
whipping these ships around like tooth picks and
smashing them against each other. It’s a nightmare
waiting reality.
More >>
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