Bacon's Rebellion

In the Bacon’s Rebellion Blog post “Here, Take My Lint” of 10 August, Jim Bacon profiles the current debate on the role of the Hampton Roads Transportation Authority (HRTA) in achieving Mobility and Access in the Hampton roads New Urban Region.

In Peter Galuszka’s Bacon’s Rebellion News Service story “Fizzled Launch” and in Jim Bacon’s 14 August Blog post “A Stumbling Start” further details of the status of HRTA emerge.

In a 15 August Blog post Jim Bacon examines “The Conservative Backlash Grows” over the legislation that established HRTA and gave a similar Agency, similar powers in the northern part of Virginia. Jim provides links to six news stories on the topic. Something must be important here to spend all this ink. Or it there?

The issue being discussed is how to raise money for transportation facilities. The debate rages in spite of the fact that more money, no matter how much is raised or from what source it comes, if spent for more of the things Agencies have spent money for in the past – primarily roadways for Large Private vehicles – such new facilities will only make the Mobility and Access Crisis worse in both the Hampton Roads New Urban Region and the Virginia portion of the National Capital Subregion.

As large an issue as this is, there is a bigger one.

As reported in Jim Bacon’s “Here, Take My Lint” story, George Donley, an “ordinary citizen,” told a 9 August public hearing by HRTA that he had only “lint” left to contribute to the functions of government. Donley’s plea made for a good quote for the public hearing story in MainStream Media and it caught Jim Bacon’s eye.

A citizen who has the wherewith all to get to a hearing and the ability to make a public statement saying he has only lint and that this foolishness would be newsworthy is a tragedy of epic proportions.

Citizens may not, for good reason, approve of what government Agencies are doing with the money they are now getting or where these Agencies plan to get more money in the future. However, the reality is that it is “the public,” “the Commons” that is running on empty. Those in the top one half of the economic food chain are spending their children’s and grandchildren’s future.

It will take vastly more taxes, vastly higher fees and vastly greater amounts of volunteer and sweat equity devoted to public, common efforts (rather than private, self-serving efforts) to create safe and secure Households, Dooryards, Clusters, Neighborhoods, Villages, Communities and New Urban Regions much less safe and secure nation-states.

Contemporary Civilization is running on fumes. There is a Mobility and Access Crisis, an Affordable and Accessible Housing Crisis and a Helter Skelter Crisis directly related to dysfunctional human settlement patterns.

The well respected commentator “Anon 12:18” states the issue well (although that may not have been his intent) in a comment under “The Conservative Backlash Grows”:

“The problem is that no taxes, no new spending is not a principle. It’s a slogan. … A promise to never ever raise taxes, to hold spending to an artificial goal, simply sets up an impossible goal.”

Bridges are falling down. Lenders are packaging debt and selling it as a speculative investment / asset. Nation-states are tearing down forests to grow sugar to burn in Large, Private Vehicles. The temperature is rising faster than anyone expected a few years ago and the US of A is leading the world in the production of Greenhouse gas and buying everything China and India can produce regardless of health, safety or economic concerns.

There is staggering private debt, mortgages are being forclosed, credit is shrinking. There is a huge balance of payments deficit, two wars and a federal government that took a 50.1% vote as a mandate and has demonstrated more incompetence and corruption than the U. S. Grant’s administration – the cannot even rebuild after a hurricane. There is a widening Wealth Gap that threatens free markets and democracy…

In the face of this fat, self-serving citizens get press quotes for saying they have noting to give but lint?

Humans has built a technology based civilization that is hugely expensive yet well fed citizens who enjoy – for now – unprecedented freedom and luxury and champion ever more private rights are not willing to accept public responsibilities.

Governance practitioners, in fear of losing their jobs, scramble to see who they need to appease and subsidize – cotton farmers, oil refiners, autonomobile makers — to keep the ship up for a few more years…

Those who only have lint to give better save in for their life jackets.

EMR

If Jim Bowden pens political potboilers reflecting the perspective of the evangelical wing of the conservative movement (See “At Last, a Political-Thriller that Cultural Conservatives Can Love”), Matt Carson reflects the libertarian wing. In his slender, self-published novel, “On a Hill They Call Capital,” Carson places a gang of wise-cracking, tobacco-chewing good ol’ boys from Rappahannock County at the center of a plot to spark a second American revolution.

In the world of Matt Carson, president of a Warrenton web development firm, government has become the leviathan state. The governing class, in the words of Ronald Reagan, has taken on the attitude, “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” In a post 9/11 twist, government doesn’t threaten only economic liberties, it undermines their civil liberties. To Carson, the Patriot Act aims a double-barreled, sawed-off shotgun at the Bill of Rights.

In this fast-paced novel, Cat, a bubba philosopher king, organizes his beer-drinking buddies into a conspiratorial brotherhood they name the Grandsons of Liberty. Launching a night-time raid into Washington, D.C., reminiscent of the Boston Tea Party, they hurl PCs out of the windows of the Internal Revenue Service headquarters building. As a follow-up, they roam the East Coast abducting Congressmen, whom they bring back to their compound in the Virginia hills and hold in a redneck re-education camp. Unlike real bad guys, though, the Grandsons of Liberty wouldn’t hurt a flea.

“On a Hill They Call Capital” has a breezy, humorous style full of allusions to popular culture, but it mines a deep vein of disenchantment with the political system. As Carson writes:

“We wanted to do something to make a real and lasting difference. Cat was right, enough bitching, we didn’t want to live the rest of our lives in fear of the tyrants in DC. We’d voted, some of us had written letters, we’d talked to our friends and families – Spanky even called in to John Stewart. Ultimately, we had tried the routes available to us and no inkling of change was in sight – so now were going to hold them accountable.”

In the fictional world of the novelist, the grand-standing stunts of Cat and his red-clay compadres succeed in igniting the popular imagination. If only… In the real world, the media would portray Carson’s rollicking revolutionaries as deluded and dangerous fanatics, and the authorities would hunt them down like terrorists. In the real world, the majority of the population would be too stupefied by government-engineered wealth transfers or too consumed by mortgages, car payments and other obligations to ever heed the call. In the real world, the American population is too beset by historical amnesia for the name “Grandsons of Liberty” to resonate with them in any way. Americans are incapable of launching the kind up uprising that Carson imagines. But, hey, it’s fun to fantasize that a few daring men might try.

To read more about the book, visit the website at http://www.grandsonsofliberty.us/.

Not long ago I watched a piece of forgettable piece of Hollywood drivel in which the bad guys, a bunch of corporate tycoons and rogue CIA goons, were undermining democracy and killing people with impunity. Sigh. Five years after 9/11, the lefties in La La Land have yet to produce a thriller in which the villains are Islamic terrorists. The United States may be engaged in a war with people who behead their captives on videotape and kill indiscriminately with truck bombs but in the mindset of tinsel town, the biggest threat to the world isn’t al Qaeda or nuclear-armed mullahs, it’s environment-raping businessmen, murderous members of the military and power-hungry Southern Senators reading from the Jerry Falwell playbook.

If you’re tired of the predictable Hollywood formula, then here’s a fresh one for you: Drug Lords and Islamists have united to attack the United States. Narco-terrorists are besieging the country. A government run by namby-pamby liberals is powerless to halt the slide into anarchy. Only a handful of good guys – a group of patriotic officers and computer programmers within the intelligence community – can save the country.

That summarizes the plot of Rosetta 6.2, a self-published novel by James Atticus Bowden, a military futurist and frequent contributor to the Bacon’s Rebellion blog and e-zine. Bowden is a gifted writer. Although the book could have benefited from the advice of a professional book editor – pick up the pacing over here, flesh out the plot over there – Rosetta 6.2 is a compelling read. I found myself reaching eagerly for the paperback volume on my bedside table every evening until I finished it.

Early in Rosetta 6.2, Bowden pulls in the reader with “the mystery of the rose cinquefoil” – an inscrutable insignia that pops up on the Internet. As the novel moves along, it sucks in the reader with the thrust and counter-thrust between the good guys, who are on the run, and the cyber-savvy narco-terrorists determined to destroy them. Bowden does a creditable job with character development, peopling his book with distinct and memorable individuals, many of them Evangelical Christians like himself, and builds an effective sub-plot around Jack, an agnostic NASA computer programmer, and his growing respect for his God-fearing companions.

The plot culminates with the execution of a hair-raising plan to destroy the Narco-terrorists. Bowden creates a fascinating scenario, but I’m not sure that it has the impact on the reader that he intends. Indeed, even as one who not infrequently finds himself on the same side of the political divide as Bowden, I found his solution to the Narco-terrorist threat to be scary – the very kind of potentially totalitarian, civil rights-trampling scheme executed by rogue militarists and fanatical Christians that jangle the nerves of paranoid Hollywood liberals. I wouldn’t be surprised if some lefty script writer one day purloins the Rosetta 6.2 plot and flips it to re-fashion Bowden’s heroes from good guys into deluded and dangerous fanatics!

Bowden has assumed a high profile in the Republican Party politics of Hampton Roads in recent years. Admire him or loathe him, you’ll gain insight into his worldview – and that of his conservative, Evangelical confreres – by reading Rosetta 6.2. You can order the book either through Amazon.com or by visiting his website, http://www.americancivilization.net/.

Dear Groveton:

Unlike Jim B, I do not have a way to contact you other than via BRB.

I am with you 100% on the new “Party” and the guidelines make good sense on first reading.

In our household, my wife and partner manages the funds so I cannot commit a dollar amount at this time. Perhaps 50% of our annual book royalites?

On a second topic: Thank you for test driving some of the terms in GLOSSARY. You are getting a good grasp of what Funcamental Change will mean.

Do not be dissuaded by sillyness like 2% shared-vehicle system potential. In a Balanced Community with Villages served by a high capacity system it would be closer to 90%. Even in a lower intensity Balanced Community the number would exceed 50%.

There are two things driving down the conventional wisdom perception.

One a shared vehicle system served Village the intensity made possible by the system converts many vehicle trips to pedestrian trips. We have pointed this out in most of our long columns on shared vehicle systems.

Second the whole conception of what a household is and how it obtains Mobility and Access has not been updated in traffic generation models.

I will be posting one more note on the density string when we have time but wanted to get a word to you before heading for the Farmers Market and then the Core for a chained trip with 9 stops. One way we cut VMT.

Keep up the good work…

EMR

So long, folks, it’s off to Ocracoke for the Bacon family. If there’s wireless Internet access, I’ll have a few things to post. If not, you won’t hear from me for 10 days. Enjoy sweltering in the 100-degree heat. I’ll be thinkin’ of ya as I’m sitting in the shade and sipping Margaritas.

German physicists say they have broken the speed of light.

The administrators of the Hokie Spirit Fund have announced how they plan to distribute some $7.5 million to Virginia Tech’s mass shooting victims and their families. Reports Matthew Bowers with the Virginian-Pilot:

Families of those killed will be eligible for $180,000 in cash, or the same amount in a combination of cash and fully or partly endowed scholarships in the names of victims. … Those injured could receive $40,000 or $90,000, depending on how long they were hospitalized, plus free tuition to complete their studies at Virginia Tech. … Others injured, and those who escaped injury but were in the Norris Hall classrooms involved in the shootings, can receive free tuition or a $10,000 cash payment.

Perhaps someone can explain to me, what is the purpose of reimbursing families for the loss of their children to the tune of $180,000? I am totally sympathetic to the families of victims for the grief they feel. But if any one of my three children died in such a horror, I can’t imagine that any amount of money would console me. I would have no desire for the money. (I could use it, trust me, but I wouldn’t want it.)

In fairness, the distribution protocol does allow recipients to endow scholarships in the names of victims. But the tenor of article suggests that a goodly number of people think $180,000 is not enough. What’s that all about? And what’s this about giving $10,000 to people who survived the shootings? Sure, they experienced a horror, but they weren’t even injured. Nobody’s giving cash pay-outs to the soldiers returning from Iraq.

This seems to be part of a larger phenomenon, the spread of the entitlement mentality: If something bad happens, I’m entitled to compensation, regardless of the circumstances, regardless of who pays. As the Washington Post reports:

Some slain students’ relatives, who plan to meet this weekend, appeared unimpressed by Feinberg’s decision on distribution of the fund. “It was expected. We’ve got to take a look at it and decide if there is going to be a response or not,” said Joseph Samaha of Centreville, whose daughter Reema was killed in Norris Hall.

The announcement is another step in the tense discussions between state officials and some family members over how much money they should receive to compensate them for their losses and cover outstanding bills.

Several relatives of slain and wounded Virginia Tech students, who believe that the school was negligent in its response to the tragedy, have said they think they are entitled to more money, in addition to the disbursements from the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund. Some have suggested a taxpayer-financed compensation fund, which Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) and Virginia legislators said they will consider.

Bottom line: Something horrible happened to my kid, and somebody is going to pay — even if they had nothing to do with it. Thus, society is held collectively responsible for the acts of a madman.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine will roll out his pre-K education program at an education summit today. Instead of making it universal, a proposal that could cost $300 million a year (or way more, depending on whom you believe; see “Universal Pre-K: $300 Million a Year or $850 Million a Year?”), he will settle for an expansion of the Virginia Preschool Initiative, reports Christina Nuckols with the Virginian-Pilot.

Kaine’s revised proposal would increase the number of children from low-income households eligible for the program from 17,500 to 30,000, at a cost of roughly $75 million a year by 2012.

Kaine’s move is a shrewd one. First, by downscaling his plan, the Governor shows that he is cognizant of the budget difficulties Virginia will face in the next two-year budget; $75 million looks like chump change compared to the $300 million that he had been talking about. Second, the money will be concentrated on children — low-income, at risk — whom studies show will get the most benefit from pre-schooling. In other words, he’s focusing funds where he can get the most bang for the buck.

Dueling experts will debate the efficacy of pre-K. Kaine will roll out his experts, including a Nobel prize-winning economist, to argue that the money will be well spent. Opponents will roll out their experts showing that the positive effects last only a few years. In all likelihood, the debate will be inconclusive. The outcome will be decided by politics, not the evidence.

I’d ask only one thing: If the General Assembly passes this legislation, set up a mechanism to track the performance of children enrolled in the program through high school, at the very least. Let’s demonstrate definitively that the program either does or does not generate the positive Return on Investment — higher academic performance, lower drop-out rates, fewer kids convicted of crimes, less welfare dependency, etc. — that proponents claim it will. Let’s not come back in 15 years and have the same debate in the absence of authoritative data to settle it.

Chris Braunlich, a vice president of the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy, a regular contributor to the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine and a candidate for the Fairfax County School board, recently issued the following statement about Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s universal pre-k initiative. I cannot improve upon it, so I reproduce it here nearly in full.

As Governor Tim Kaine prepares to launch his program for universal preschool, it is worthwhile to underscore some of the statistics coming from a recent study by economist Robert Lynch for the Economic Policy Institute – an organization advocating universal preschool.

In his study, Dr. Lynch examined the costs and benefits of high quality preschool programs and their positive impact over time on federal and state budgets, crime costs, and earnings. Among his findings specifically for Virginia: