Bacon's Rebellion

Former Mexican President Vincente Fox opened his address to the Richmond Forum last night with an encomium to the Juans, the Marias, the Joses and all the other brave Mexicans who have immigrated to the United States to work hard and build a better life for themselves and their families. It was a heart-felt and effective gesture (and one that he probably has used all over the United States, wherever he has plugged his book, “Revolution of Hope: The Life, Faith and Dreams of a Mexican President.”) Though speaking in English and not his native language, Fox was engaging and charismatic. It was easy to see how he became the first Mexican politican to break the political monopoly of the Institutional Revolutionary Party.

For Americans, Fox is an especially effective advocate for the Marios and Marias in the United States because, unlike many Latin politicians, he loves the U.S. and he holds this country up to its own ideals. His grandfather was an Irish-German who sought his fortune in Mexico during the second half of the 19th century, worked hard and became a large landowner before a revolutionary government expropriated 90 percent of his property. A successful corporate executive who rose to the head of Coca-Cola Mexico before his entry into politics, Fox also is an unabashed champion of free markets and free trade, which he regards as the tonic to the authoritarianism and economic nationalism that prevented Latin America from sharing in global economic progress for most of the 20th century.

Fox speaks of the “American Dream,” which is shared by all peoples of the Americas, not just the United States of America. “Immigrants are people that come here to work, come here to contribute to this economy and to this great nation. Immigrants are loyal to the land that opened their arms to them,” he said, as reported by the Times-Dispatch. (Bizarrely, the T-D devoted its lede and half the article to the fact that Fox thinks the U.S. should pull out of Iraq, a point that was utterly tangential to his discussion of free trade and immigration.)

Far from throwing up walls between Mexico and the U.S., Fox wants to see the two countries grow closer together. He would like to build upon the North American Free Trade Agreement by negotiating common customs agreements between Mexico, the U.S., and Canada, much as the European Union has done. He would like to see all North Americans share a common passport. Ultimately, he suggests, they could share a common currency.

Mexico has made tremendous economic progress since a massive devaluation of the peso in the 1990s caused massive economic suffering, Fox said. The key has been a stable currency and open borders that ended the country’s economic isolation and forced Mexican enterprises to adapt to global competition. Mexican standards of living have risen dramatically since then, he said.

Fox acknowledges that the United States has a legitimate issue with people who enter the country illegally, but he says the answer isn’t building walls. Congress needs to develop mechanisms, like guest worker programs, that allow Mexicans (and other Hispanics) to work and reside legally in the U.S., and then return home.

In sum, Fox appealed to the best part of the (U.S.) American character in asking for more sympathy for his fellow countrymen. He did not label the anti-illegal movement as xenophobic or racist. As such, he was a far more effective ambassador for his people than he would have been had he embraced the hostile, don’t-give-an-inch rhetoric so widespread in the pro-illegal movement.

I have a question for those who profess so much concern for the plight of Hispanics: Why don’t they support an extension of the NAFTA free trade agreements to Central America, the Caribbean and Latin America, as Fox advocates? Why shouldn’t the United States help other countries to follow the path of Mexico, reform their economies and create a sustainable prosperity — so people don’t have to leave their homelands in the first place?

Don’t white, liberal elites feel compassion toward Hispanics when they’re stuck in their home countries, victims of self-defeating government policies and U.S. trade barriers? Or is it only when Hispanics come to the United States, where they can be herded onto the liberal plantation and help Democrats lock up electoral dominance for the next 50 years, that they are worthy of sympathy?

Joining the Hispanic-bashing craze, Chesterfield County officials will hold a public hearing Nov. 14 to get public comment on “illegal immigrants” whom county officials claim cost more than $2 million annually in local services.

This expense to local taxpayers is apparently so profound that county officials are considering a variety of punitive measures to stop the barbarians at the gate. Under consideration are requiring Chesterfield business owners to certify that they do not hire illegal immigrants before they can obtain business licenses and zoning strictures to prevent illegals from living chock-a-block in houses or apartments.

The point of the hearing seems to be to provide a venue for public outcry on illegal aliens, whether informed or not, so that county supervisors can proceed with the anti-alien crusade. Chesterfield is predominately white and Republican so it may be no surprise that it is a member of the 20 city and county informal vigilante association designed to blunt to invasion of illegals. It doesn’t matter if the onslaught is real or imagined.

The basis of the Nov. 14 hearing is a report sent to the Board of Supervisors on Aug. 16 by County Administrator James J.L. Stegmaier outlining the cost estimates of the illegal alien burden and what can be done. As a Chesterfield resident and a small business owner (albeit without any employees), I take special interest in the matter. So, I studied Stegmaier’s report, found some holes, and called Don Kapel, the county’s press spokesman. “It is amorphous,” he admitted. “Nobody knows how many illegal immigrants might be here.”

He referred me to Rebecca Dixson, an assistant county administrator who played a key role in assembling the report. I called her about four times and never got called back. So, dear readers please know I tried to get a response from the county, but was unsuccessful.

Let’s get down to brass tacks:

· The report says that, based on 2006 figures, illegal immigrants cost the county about $1.3 million in direct costs plus another $737,000 in indirect costs. “Staff has estimated the potential local cost of providing selected services to those individuals deemed to be in the county illegally. These figures are estimates only, determined by each department using reasonable assumptions,” the report says. I could not get an explanation from the county about what “reasonable assumptions” are.

· The biggest single costs are health ($310,000), but the report provided no explanation of how this figure was obtained. In addition, about $409,000 in expenses supposedly came from poor illegal immigrants who used emergency room services in the county. The county contacted the Virginia Department of Medical Assistance Services and learned that total indigent emergency room use in the county was $629,500. Although the report admits, “data is not kept on this,” the county, nonetheless, attributed up to 70 percent of the indigent use of emergency care by illegal aliens resulting in the $409,000 figure. This is a “staff” estimate but no information was given on how it is based. Did someone check the patients’ passports and visas or were the patients simply dark-skinned and spoke Spanish?

· Illegal immigrants are apparently bad drivers who don’t pay their fines. Aliens here without documents racked up unpaid fines worth $336,840, the study says. This is based on another “staff estimate” that 31 percent of the total outstanding fines are the result of illegal immigrants. I could not learn where the 31 percent number came from and the report did not say.

· Illegal immigrants were said to be responsible for $230,000 in Local Jail expenses. No explanations were given. However, the jail does get reimbursed for illegals picked up while their documents are reviewed or for deportation by the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement Bureau, which is the sole government agency that is really tasked with cracking down on illegal aliens. Since 2003, the county has received $145,000 from ICE for this. “Staff estimates that six to 10 illegal aliens are now being picked up monthly” as a result of the joint ICE program, the report says. A couple of points here: Is that a tremendous number given the county’s size of about 300,000? Also, the jail has been stuffed with as many as 400 inmates at any time. Ten aliens isn’t a lot. What’s more if presumably illegal aliens are already in jail, why do we need extra measures like having business owners certify they don’t hire illegals?

So it goes. Dear readers, do you see a major epidemic here? Or do you see a politically-charged report with a lot of squishy “staff estimates?” I tend to see the latter.

The situation reminds me of what life was like in the Communist Soviet Union where I worked as a U.S. news correspondent in the 1980s. In that police state, Soviet citizens were required to carry internal passports at all times and these had the notorious “Line Five” which listed “nationality.” Being “Jewish” or “Uzbek” was considered a nationality but having it so listed meant one was more likely to be refused work or a university position.

The Kremlin had another trick to keep the unwashed from the predominately Slavic (read “white”) and desirable cities such as Moscow or Leningrad. To live legally in those places, one had to have a “propiska” or living permit. It was nearly impossible to get one by yourself. So, there were literally millions of phony marriages set up, whereby, for a covert fee, a couple would marry. Since one of the couple had the desired “propiska,” that meant that the other partner could get one too. When they married, bingo, they divorced, but both kept their desired propiskas.

Of course, Chesterfield County isn’t the Soviet Union, at least not yet. It may be some time before the Board of Supervisors considers internal county passports and living permits. But what is sad is that a lot of emotion will be vented Nov. 14 without much factual basis. And the Chesterfield supervisors likely will proceed with measures that are throwbacks to some ugly parts of Virginia’s history when the color of one’s skin was an obsession.

On Wednesday, I posted a blog questioning the commitment of Gov. Timothy M. Kaine to a “green” agenda in areas where it comes into hard conflict with the backers of Business As Usual. (See “The Greenwashing of the Kaine Administration.”) I wasn’t entirely fair. I need to set the record straight, at least regarding the issue of conservation and electricity re-regulation.

I noted that Kaine had signed a re-regulation bill that was highly favorable to the electric utilities. I asked, “Will he accede to a Big Grid electric power infrastructure, or will he back meaningful efforts to evolve Virginia’s power grid into a more decentralized system with small-scale and renewable power producers?”

Well, the fact is — and I should have remembered because I covered it in this blog — the conservation and renewable-energy elements contained in the bill, modest though they may be, were inserted at Kaine’s behest. As we are reminded in an article, “Virginia’s Energy Policy,” published under the governor’s name in Virginia Tech’s “Issues & Answers,” Kaine added the following amendments to the re-regulation bill:

• Place a greater emphasis on electric-generating plant performance, customer service, and utility operating efficiency when calculating allowable return on equity for utilities.

• Provide a greater incentive for nuclear, carbon capture-compatible clean coal, and renewable energy plants (lower-carbon technologies).

• Increase the energy efficiency goal to 10 percent from 5 percent.

• Strengthen requirements for use of renewable sources in electricity generation.

Kaine also issued Executive Order 48, which contained a number of conservation initiatives in state government, and he signed a four-day tax holiday for Energy Star appliances.

I still stand by my other observations in the post, but I was unfair to suggest that Gov. Kaine was less than dedicated to the cause of energy conservation. My apologies.

Clayton Roberts, with the Virginia Foundation for Research and Economic Education, provides as concise a summary of the 2007 elections as anything I’ve read in the newspapers. I can add little insight, so I reproduce verbatim some of his comments made in an e-mail distribution today.

Partisan control of the state Senate is up for grabs with at least eight races now polling within the margin of error. Democrats need a net gain of four seats to take control of the Senate for the first time since 1995. Privately, some Republicans concede they would do well to manage a 20-20 tie in the 40-member Senate, although the GOP has gained recent momentum in several races, largely on the strength of the immigration issue. One thing seems certain: control of the Senate will be by the narrowest of margins. Given a tie, Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling would probably give his party the organizational edge to control committees and the floor.

Republicans will retain control of the House, although stalwarts on both sides of the aisle agree it’s likely the Democrats will pick up a few seats. Estimates vary from a net gain of two to six seats for House Democrats, who hope to come within striking distance of a majority in two years. Substantive gains by the minority party could have some in the House leadership looking over their shoulders and counting votes to secure their posts when the new Assembly convenes in January.

Campaign spending in this election cycle is spiraling upward. Candidates are spending nearly twice as much as they did four years ago and total legislative campaign war chests now exceed $55 million. That is a staggering sum of money when you consider that no more than 30 seats are really in play.

At least a dozen candidates will raise more than $1 million each for their efforts. In at least two marquee Senate races, total spending will approach $3 million, far surpassing all previous records.

In the final days, candidates are battling as if in hand-to-hand combat, marshalling their precinct captains and voter turnout troops in the final push to the finish line. In the end, the key races likely will be decided by which candidates do a better job of getting their voters to the polls on November 6.

Roanoke has launched a bicycle sharing program. It’s not quite the scale of the initiative in Paris, France, with its 10,000 bicycles, but the ShareBike initiative does let people sign out two-wheelers at “between five and 10 area businesses and organizations” to ride wherever pleasure or work takes them, reports the Roanoke Times.

The rules are simple: Borrow a bike at one location, turn it in at another. One virtue of the program is its low overhead: There are no full-time employees. Organizers hope ShareBike can pay for a planned downtown office by charging $3 to check out a bike for a half-day’s usage and $6 for a day.

In the early 1970s Eugene Ruyle, my Marxist anthropology professor (yes, he really was a self-avowed Marxist) assigned a book, “Who Rules America” by G. William Domhoff, which described the mechanisms by which business elites ruled the country. As one might expect, the book grotesquely over-simplified reality, but it contained elements of undeniable truth.

As I began writing this blog post, I checked Amazon.com out of curiosity and found that the book has been updated and is still in print. This excerpt from the book description sums up Domhoff’s thesis nicely (my italics) :

Domhoff argues that the owners and top-level managers in large income-producing properties are far and away the dominant figures in the U.S. Their corporations, banks, and agribusinesses come together as a corporate community that dominates the federal government in Washington and their real estate, construction, and land development companies form growth coalitions that dominate most local governments.

That second sentence sums up the thrust of the two lead pieces in today’s edition of Bacon’s Rebellion. Peter Galuszka and I teamed up for a mini-version of “Who Rules Virginia?” I wish I’d dusted off my old copy of “Who Rules America?” It might have come in handy when I was writing over the weekend.

In my column, “The Ruling Party,” I expand upon an argument that should be familiar to readers of this blog. While there may be real differences between Democrats and Republicans on social and cultural issues, both are establishment parties that are virtually indistinguishable in how they work on behalf of the vested business and economic interests that bankroll their political campaigns. When it comes to legislating transportation, land use, energy and the environment, there are no meaningful differences between Ds and Rs — unless it’s the counter-intuitive notion that the Dems are even more beholden to the “growth lobby” than the Republicans.

Drawing upon data from the Virginia Public Access Project (I genuflect in their general direction), I show who the dominant constituencies in Virginia are, how much they spend on campaign contributions, and how they work to protect Business As Usual — or, as my 60’s-holdover anthro professor would have called it, the “status quo.” The difference between Mr. Ruyle and myself is that I’m not under any illusion that a proletariat revolution is going to solve anything, nor do I demonize business interests for looking out for their own self interest in an era of ever-expanding government power. When everyone else is reaching into the government goody bag, it’s hard to blame business for doing the same.

But, if we’re ever going to reinvent transportation, health care, schools, human settlement patterns, the energy economy and environmental protections with the goal of making Virginia competitive in the 21st century, we must blast a number of vested interests out of their political pill boxes. (I’ve been watching the “Letters from Iwo Jima,” can you tell?)

While my story glosses the surface and hits the big themes, Peter’s article, “‘Senator’ Thomas,” hones in on a case study of William G. Thomas, the most influential lobbyist in Virginia. Thomas’ roster of clients is a who’s who of those who rule Virginia — Dominion Virginia Power, Capital One, Smithfield and Genworth (that’s four Fortune 500 companies), not to mention the Home Builders Association of Virginia and other assorted muckety-mucks. Particularly instructive is the web of personal relationships that Thomas has built over the years as a former chairman of the Democratic Party, board member of Dominion and law partner with super-developer John “Til” Hazel.

Thomas is smooth, gentlemanly, witty — and very much a defender of the business status quo. Incredibly wired into the power structure, he has entre to the highest levels of business and political power. He also has a gift for working through incredibly complex legislation. If he is lobbying in favor of electric re-regulation or against the proffer system, few are the forces that can stand in his way.

Yes, we’re still blowing the burning embers of rebellion in the hopes of igniting a San Diego-sized conflagration (metaphorically speaking) here in Virginia. Read our latest huffing and puffing in the Oct. 29, 2007, edition of the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine.

And don’t forget to subscribe, darn it! Don’t miss a single issue.

“Senator” Thomas
Uber-lobbyist Bill Thomas shepherds controversial bills through the General Assembly for Virginia’s biggest corporations. Even critics credit him with phenomenal powers.
by Peter Galuszka

The Ruling Party
Forget Dems and Republicans. The people who run Virginia are the vested interests that hire the lobbyists and pass out campaign donations. Their never-changing mission: to butress the status quo.
by James A. Bacon

It’s the Network
Skip the political rhetoric and apply a tech truism to transportation for a clearer view of the challenge.
by Doug Koelemay

A Waste of Energy
Most “energy conservation” initiatives fall short because they don’t address dysfunctional human settlement patterns, the root cause of excess consumption.
by EM Risse

Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
By bashing the Dulles Greenway, Congressman Frank Wolf purports to stand up for Virginia’s weak and defenseless commuters. In reality, he could be driving off private investment in the state’s highways.
by Leonard Gilroy

Still Time for Surprises
The U.S. Senate race is shaping up as a match between Jim Gilmore and Mark-not-John Warner. But Gilmore doesn’t have a lock on the nomination yet: There is running room to his right.
by Norm Leahy

Jo Ann Davis
1950 – 2007
by James Atticus Bowden

Alternate Universe
There’s one world that participates in a globally connected economy. Then there’s Virginia, which is making a name for itself as a hotbed of nativism.
by Peter Galuszka

Harvesting Rainwater
Rain cisterns are an ancient solution to a still- pervasive problem. Widespread use would stretch urban water resources and temper the impact of storm-water run off.
by Richard Thornton

Nice & Curious Questions
Who Was the Bunny Man? Urban Legends of Virginia
by Edwin S. Clay III and Patricia Bangs