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sleepiness”
on the budget while Governor Warner goes “through
the conventional laundry list.”
It’s
depressing enough to make one want to pack it in and
go on vacation … wait, according to Dave
Addis of the Virginian-Pilot,
“Nearly everybody is on vacation in August, either
in body or spirit. If their bodies aren't at the
beach or on a golf course, their brains are. Little
of real importance happens.”
Melton
charged
that the “Virginia
political establishment has all
but thrown in the towel on tackling some of the
really big and complicated problems confronting the
state,” citing legislative committee work on a
public facilities ordinance and on communications
taxes. He also predicted doom
and gloom, suggesting that Virginia
might be
on a path leading to a reduction in its sacred AAA
bond rating. Melton
scoffed at the results one year after Governor
Warner told legislators that state government would
look “starkly different” because of budget cuts:
The
dramatically leaner and more efficient government
hasn't materialized. For all the "pain"
associated with closing a $6 billion budget
shortfall, state government looks and feels more or
less the same to consumers as it always has.
While
there’s plenty of truth in Melton’s analysis,
the August lull seems to have left him overly
cranky.
Speaking
of cranky, Daily
Press reporter Gordon
Morse unloaded on the University
of Virginia’s
Center for Politics and its conference assessing Gov.
L. Douglas Wilder (Virginia Pundit Watch covered
other reaction to the conference in our last
edition). Morse
charged the Center’s leader, UVA Professor Larry
Sabato, with “playing politics” and accused the
conference of being about “self-serving spin.”
It seems that Morse, who at least is up front about
acknowledging that he worked for Wilder’s
predecessor, Gov. Gerald L. Baliles, believes that
an evil “populist beast” was unleashed with
Wilder’s election. Virginia
hasn’t been the same since and the Center was
remiss in not finding speakers to hammer Morse’s
thesis home.
Thankfully,
Alex
Theodoridis, chief of staff for the Center
for Politics, responded to Morse, accusing him of
imagining “a fairly vast conspiracy including
individuals from every corner of Virginia
political life … so committed to raising money for
our organization that they would sacrifice their
personal integrity in a public forum.” He further
wrote,
Given
the actual content of the event, one wonders if
Morse's critique stems more from a negative
predisposition toward Wilder than from disinterested
observation of the conference . . . We are always
pleased when we can inspire further discussion in
the media of political issues, and credit Morse for
extending this dialogue. However, I believe the
accusatory tone of his piece is gratuitous and, most
objectionably, counterproductive to what I hope is a
shared goal of a better informed and more
impassioned body politic.
In
the “dog days of August,” suffering from
“chronic fatigue,” a Virginia
debate about the decade-old Wilder administration
qualifies as hot news.
More
History
Morse
wasn’t the only one settling scores and fighting
old battles. Jeff
Schapiro of the Richmond
Times-Dispatch fawned over a memo by Gov.
Warner’s Chief of Staff Bill Leighty on limits to
political activity as a way to trash the
“imperious style” of previous administrations.
Not surprisingly, his example of imperiousness was
Jay Timmons, Gov. George Allen’s “factotum.”
In the Daily
Press, Hugh
Lessig and Terry Scanlon relive Don Beyer’s
disastrous 1997 gubernatorial campaign and examine
his quest for redemption as head of Howard Dean’s
presidential campaign in Virginia.
As
Goes California,
So Goes Virginia
Arlington
Democrat Jay Fisette announced he would join
Fairfax’s
Kate Hanley in challenging troubled 8th
District Democratic Congressman Jim Moran. Washington
Post columnist Marc
Fisher, a Moran nemesis, reacted by comparing
Virginia Democrats to Californians:
Californians
take on their failed incumbents with a wild free for
all and an army of celebrities and
pseudo-celebrities. Here, we take on our failed
incumbents with a formula almost guaranteed to keep
them in office . . . Instead of rallying around one
strong challenger, the Democrats seem determined to
divide the opposition and let Moran slip by. In a
way, this is the same phenomenon we're seeing in
California
--the further
dissolution of the political party as an agent of
discipline.
Fisher
did allow that Fisette was “a promising and sharp
politician, a good representative of what’s made Arlington
a well-run community.” But he’s not
Schwarzenegger.
Pillowtex
Fight
The
frustration of workers who lost their jobs when
Pillowtex Corporation closed in Henry
County
spilled over into the op-ed pages of the Roanoke
Times. Loy
King, a retired Norfolk Southern manager, rails
bitterly against NAFTA, Gov. Warner, and just about
everyone in power: “Did these folks promise
utopia, then complacently watch national policy
trash your livelihood? And now they have no real
answers except ‘we will retrain you.’ Loosely
translated that means ‘let them eat cake.’"
Gordon
Morse, writing in the Washington
Post, finds
Virginia’s community colleges, the front line for retraining,
underfunded despite “jaw music” from
politicians.
Play
No Ball with MLB
Sportswriter
Paul
Woody of the Richmond
Times-Dispatch wrote that Major League Baseball
“is not a business in which Northern
Virginia
needs to be involved.”
Cats
and Vultures
As
might be expected, Roanoke
Times columnist Barnie Day was all over the Waste Management Board’s
tone-deaf handling of James
River
trash barge fees and regulations. Of the $1 per ton
fee approved by the Board, Day exclaims, “My cat
drives a harder bargain than that!” What Day
failed to mention is that his cat, like all cats,
can do what it pleases.
Virginia
regulatory fees are limited by law to the costs of
administering the regulations. Bob
Gibson of the Daily
Progress said only Virginia’s vultures would benefit from the $1 fee. Some
constituencies are more important than others.
Hokie
Hyperbole
Virginia
Tech fans are justly proud of their football
prowess, but please —anthropologists won’t be
studying tailgate parties 10,000 years from now. Mike
Ellerbrock,
substitute team chaplain, uses a Roanoke
Times op-ed to compare the importance of
pre-game Hokie rituals to the depictions of
prehistoric survival found in the famed French
Lascaux cave paintings.
--
August
11, 2003
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