Bacon's Rebellion

That’s the title of another article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal report, “One Billion Cars.” The WSJ has stumbled onto a truth that, so far, has eluded Virginia pundits and policy makers.

Until recently, expanding highways and roads has been the traditional response to congestion. But in many areas of the world, such expansion isn’t feasible anymore because of lack of funding, opposition from residents or simply lack of room.

The WSJ highlights a variety of transportation alternatives that are being explored around the world. They include (with cutesy WSJ subheads):

• Rubbing out Rubbernecking. Accidents and stalled cars breed rubbernecking and congestion. Many communities are investing in “incident management” capabilities to get those cars off the roads as quickly as possible.
• Car-Road Talk. Better traffic light sequencing can move more cars through the same fixed roadway.
• Paying for a Lane. HOT lanes and congestion pricing will encourage some drivers to find alternatives to driving alone during during periods of peak demand.
• Alternative-Transit Bonus. Encourage employees to carpool, use mass transit or telecommute through subsidies, vouchers and ride-matching websites.
• Quick Notice for Drivers. Provide drivers with more real-time information about traffic conditions so they can steer clear of gridlock.

Bacon’s Rebellion has explored each of these alternatives. My point in quoting the Wall Street Journal is to make it clear that these aren’t quirky ideas advanced by some eccentric blogger. Other people around the world are pursuing these ideas. Even the Virginia Department of Transportation is pursuing them. Unfortunately, the Traffic Light Sequencing lobby and the Carpooling lobby in Virginia can’t mobilize millions of dollars in campaign contributions, so, when it comes to funding, their ideas don’t get much of a hearing.

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal published a special section entitled “One Billion Cars” that explored the ramifications of an increasingly auto-centric world. According to a graph in the report, the global fleet of cars and light trucks in 2005 was roughly 750 million. The number should shoot well past 1.0 billion by 2020, and 1.2 billion by 2030. Global gasoline consumption is expected to surge from roughly 275 billion gallons of “gasoline equivalent” in 2005 to 400 billion by 2030.

Now, I’m not one of those alarmists who thinks that we’re running out of oil. As gas prices rise, free markets will introduce new technologies — witness the new petroleum-cracking catalysts unveiled recently by Richmond-based Albemarle Corporation, which can refine lower-quality oil reserves more efficiently — and new substitutes like bio-fuels. Whether those technologies/substitutes can come online fast enough to compensate for increasing demand from China, India and other developing nations, however, is questionable. Combine rising global demand with unstable oil supplies, and the price of oil is likely to continue increasing. U.S. crude oil futures set a new record yesterday, hitting nearly $71 per barrel.

As noted in a previous post, “Virginia’s Vulnerability to Oil Shocks,” Virginians consumed 527 gallons of gasoline per capita in 2004. Of course, that understates the impact on motorists, because not everyone drives. Virginians consumed 979 gallons per motorist in 2004, according to the Division of Motor Vehicles. Each $1 increase in the price of gasoline taxes relieves the typical driver of nearly $1,000 in after-tax, take-home pay. A household with two drivers sees a reduction of nearly $2,000 per year!

I cannot stress this enough: Our scattered, disconnected, low-density pattern of development is a significant contributor to the increase in Vehicle Miles Driven and gasoline consumption. Over the past half-century, Virginians have built an autocentric physical infrastructure adapted to a cheap-energy world but maladapted to an expensive-energy world. All the signs are there for anyone who’s paying attention. But our political leaders continue their Business As Usual transportation and land use policies, differing only in the extent to which they are willing to dedicate new revenue streams to perpetuate the ancien energy regime.

The issue in the 2006 transportation debate is not just $1 billion a year in taxes: It’s the nearly $15 billion a year Virginians spend on gasoline, the $20 billion a year a few years from now and the $25 billion a year a few years after that. In a classic case of the blind leading the blind — blind politicians leading blind citizens and egged on by blind editorial pundits — our elected leaders are redoubling their commitment to energy-intensive transportation and land use policies that will diminish Virginians’ economic competitiveness and standard of living for decades to come.

Claudia Emerson, a Chatham native, University of Virginia graduate and, oh, by the way, an associate professor at Mary Washington University, has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry this year, for her work, “Late Wife.”

From the book jacket: “In Late Wife, a woman explores her disappearance from one life and reappearance in another as she addresses her former husband, herself, and her new husband in a series of epistolary poems.”

A sample from the poem “Artifact”:

For three years you lived in your house
just as it was before she died: your wedding
portrait on the mantel, her clothes hanging
in the closet, her hair still in the brush.

More from the Associated Press.

Note to the Pulitzer Prize Board biography writers: It’s “Chatham,” not “Chattham.” Down here in Virginia, it matters.

I praised University of Virginia President John Casteen in a recent post for evicting students who’d staged a sit-in at Madison Hall over the issue of a living wage. I based my comments on reporting by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Now comes an e-mail from four professors/administrators associated with the Virginia Organizing Project asserting that “Casteen Betrayed University of Virginia students.”

Based on the contents of the e-mail, I have even more respect for the way Casteen handled the situation. According to the four professors:

On day one of the protest, Casteen denied food to the students, refused to allow faculty supporters to enter the building to confer with them and arrested one of the professors who tried to enter. On day two of the sit-in, Casteen ordered that wireless internet services be cut-off, disabling students from sending in their class assignments, and continued to refuse entrance to faculty supporters who brought food, water and books to the protestors.

Looks to me like Casteen was making every effort to be reasonable, increasing pressure on the students very slowly and giving them every opportunity to depart without being arrested. Obviously, the students didn’t take the hint.

By pursuing these strategies, Casteen ensured that by the time he met with students — at 2 a.m. on April 15 — to open negotiations, the students would be hungry, sleep deprived and without counsel.

First reaction: Waaaah! Second reaction: After two days of this nonsense, Casteen met with these people at two o’clock in the middle of the night? The guy must have the patience of a saint!

[The students] have followed all of the proper channels by making presentations to the Board of Visitors, meeting with Casteen and other high ranking officials, and lobbying for alumni support. It is only after eight years of attempting to make headway on this issue that the students took the step of civil disobedience.

Someone needs to explain to these people that you don’t always get your way, even when you’ve exhausted every means of persuasion. It’s called democracy and the rule of law. It’s imperfect, but it beats legislation by sit-in.

The April 17, 2006, edition of Bacon’s Rebellion has been published. The entire edition can be viewed here. Columns include:

On the Chopra Block
Cutting costs in the Medicaid system may sound an odd task for Virginia’s Secretary of Technology. But that’s only if you don’t know Aneesh Chopra.
by James A. Bacon

Making the Disaster Fit the Plan
The Congressional analysis is in: The Katrina disaster represented a failure at all levels of government, not only to plan ahead, but to communicate and react to unforeseen developments. by Doug Koelemay

Howell Gets Feisty
One reason the House of Delegates is holding firm in the budget debate this year is that House Speaker Bill Howell is more assertive, even combative, than ever before.
by Patrick McSweeney

Kaine Reneges Again
Tim Kaine has broken three important promises in a mere three months: First transportation taxes, then land use reform, and now the marriage amendment.
by Patrick McSweeney

Crippling the Disabled
Virginia’s educational lobby upholds its own institutional interests above those of the most vulnerable members of our society, disabled children.
by Chris Braunlich

Governed by Demagogues
Virginia politicians are not simply spinning the truth — they’re engaging in outright demagoguery. And they will continue as long as the electorate remains apathetic.
by Philip Rodokanakis

Time to Choose: Are You a Peasant or a Patriot?
The royals running Virginia’s House of Lords, er, Senate, think the populace is too supine to protest another tax increase.
by Jim Bowden

When Democrats Attack
The Democratic blogosphere has a problem with the fact that U.S. Senatorial hopeful Harris Miller is a rich Washington lobbyist. My reaction: So what?
by Conaway Haskins

Race, Class and Affirmative Action
Jim Webb supports affirmative action for African-Americans to counteract historical injustices of slavery and segregation. But poverty, he notes, does not discriminate on the basis of skin color.
by Conaway Haskins

Nice & Curious Questions:
After Monticello: Modern Architecture in Virginia
by Edwin S. Clay III and Patricia Bangs

From Lieutenant Governor William T. Bolling comes an e-mail this morning reminding recipients that today is “tax freedom day” in the Old Dominion: the day that Virginians, on average, stop working to pay taxes and start working for themselves. He adds this commentary:

My friends, when you have to work for 107 days every year to pay your taxes, that is excessive taxation. …

We used to hear that Virginia was one of the lowest tax states in the nation. While that used to be true, it is true no more. The Tax Foundation reports that Virginia now has the 17th highest state and local tax burden in the nation. That puts us in the top 1/3 of states when it comes to taxing our citizens. Nonetheless, there are still those who think we don’t pay enough taxes. They are back again this year asking us to pay higher taxes, albeit to support a worthy goal of increasing funding for transportation.

But with Virginia’s economy growing at a rate of 11% per year, and with state spending set to increase by 19% in the upcoming biennium, we do not need to raise taxes to fund transportation. What we need is the fiscal discipline to direct our resources to our highest priorities.

When ranked by total dollars exacted, Virginia has become a high-tax state. The Axis of Taxes points out, with some legitimacy, that Virginia is a moderate/low-tax state when ranked by taxes as a percentage of income. In other words, because Virginians have higher-than-average incomes, the tax burden isn’t as heavy.

I don’t find that riposte particularly consoling. The harder I work to make more money, I can be assured that my state and local governments will be soaking up their “fair share” of my income. I’d prefer to see state/local governments that committed themselves with unremitting zeal to boosting productivity, re-engineering processes and re-imagining services to meet core needs more cost effectively. That’s something we did for two years of the Warner administration while the state was in financial “crisis.” Now we’ve reverted to a multi-year phase of aggressive expansion — which will last as long as the current economic expansion does.

Over on Commonwealth Conservative, Will Vehrs takes note of an article in yesterday’s Richmond Times-Dispatch suggesting that Toyota is looking at the Roanoke region as a location for a new auto assembly plant — welcome news indeed after Ford announced its plan to close its Norfolk truck assembly plant in 2008. But the unidentified Kaine administration official who leaked the news might have queered the deal. As Vehrs observes:

This anonymous Kaine official is violating a fundamental tenet of economic development – confidentiality of projects under negotiation.

Let’s hope that Toyota overlooks this gaffe. But whoever released the information needs a serious talking to — if he/she hasn’t already gotten one.

Update: One of our readers (see comments on this post) notes that The New York Times first broke the story and suggests that the Kaine administration did no more than confirm what had already been reported. That mitigates the offense somewhat, but I would hasten to add that in my years of covering economic development, the only response that I’ve ever gotten on a hot economic-development story was “no comment.”

In California, some big developers aren’t just building houses — they’re building “communities.” They aren’t just targeting specific income brackets, they’re targeting “psychographic” profiles, fashioning housing types and neighborhood assets for people with different value structures. One enclave might be designed for traditionalists with religious values, another for “cultural creatives” with progressive values, and yet another for materialist strivers. The Washington Post thinks this trend may be moving to the East Coast.

Oh, great, as if the human proclivity for gravitating toward others like themselves wasn’t strong enough, now we have developers institutionalizing the process. The only way to counter the increasing polarization of our society is to encourage diverse people to interact, both professionally or socially. When everyone starts cocooning in neighborhoods of like-minded people, it will be all the easier to misunderstand, even demonize, the “other,” and all the harder to bridge the socio-political divides.

I wonder if anyone has discerned a market for neighborhoods with diversity in age, incomes, occupations, ethnicities and value systems. … Oh, yes, they have. They’re called cities.

So far, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has managed to get away with flip-flops on two major issues — no new transportation taxes without a lockbox, and support for a marriage amendment — without serious repercussions. Oh, sure, Republican legislators, conservative bloggers (including myself) and the other usual suspects tried to make an issue of the reversals, but Kaine could brush off the huffing and puffing as long as the Mainstream Media treated it as the usual partisan bickering.

But that could change. Jeff Schapiro offers a nuanced perspective in his column today. He doesn’t accuse Kaine of lying, as some of the Governor’s more partisan critics have done, but he does declare that Kaine has “wangled — some detractors might say weaseled — his way out of a previous position.”

As a senior member of the capital press corps, and one not known for Republican sympathies, Schapiro could give the flip-flop charges some traction. Kaine had better not reverse any more positions — especially the moderate stances that helped him get elected — or he soon could have a full-fledged credibility gap on his hands.

I’m not a big fan of University of Virginia President John Casteen (See “UVa under Siege — from Within“), but I’ll give him credit for his handling of the living-wage sit-in over the weekend. Seventeen UVa students who’d been occuping Madison Hall were arrested and charged with trespassing. As one observer quoted in the Richmond Times-Dispatch described the episode, “They were pretty much dragged out.”

Casteen had met with the students and discussed their demands for the University to raise the minimum wage of university employees from $9.37 an hour (significantly higher than the national minimum wage) to $10.72 an hour. The students are entitled to demonstrate over the living wage, but they’re aren’t entitled to disrupt the lives of others. From the T-D account:

“We believe it was important to bring this sit-in to conclusion so that others might get on with their lives and the staff of Madison Hall might be able to get back to work on Monday morning,” Casteen said in a statement [Saturday] night. “It was time for the disruption to come to an end.”

My friend Alvaro is a Brazilian immigrant who entered the United States legally about eight years ago and has played by the rules ever since. He got his green card, started a house-cleaning business and pays his taxes. When he had an expensive medical procedure, he paid all of his bills, inflated though they were for anyone who, like him, had no insurance. Alvaro was keen to establish good credit. It was almost comical how, in a country awash in credit cards, he applied for one after another… after another… and got nothing but rejections. Finally, when a bank did extend him credit, it was one of the proudest moments of his life. He didn’t need the credit, he just wanted the affirmation that he was credit-worthy. Because he works like a demon and has no wife or children, Alvaro paid cash for his car, saved enough money to pay the down payment on a house, and manages to remit money back to his mother and father in Brazil.

Many of my perceptions about the wave of Latin American immigrants to the United States are colored by what Alvaro tells me. Many are decent, hard-working people like him who aspire to the same things all Americans do. I welcome them to America, and I will do anything to help them build a better life. But important distinctions must be made between immigrants like Alvaro who reside here legally and those who do not. Alvaro certainly makes that distinction. Sometimes, he feels like a chump for playing by the rules.

There is a remarkably large Brazilian community in Richmond — some 2,000 immigrants or more, according to a Brazilian priest I encountered while standing in line at the Post Office. (Richmond even has a Brazilian restaurant now!) When Alvaro speaks of other immigrants, he’s referring mainly to the Brazilians of his acquaintance, although he sometimes alludes to other Hispanics and Russians.

Most of the illegals, Alvaro says, “don’t care.” They don’t care that they’re here illegally. They don’t care that they send their children to local schools but pay no taxes to support the schools. They don’t care that they are given medical treatment at local hospitals and that they can get away with never paying the bills. Why should they care? Compared to where they come from, life is good.

Hundreds of thousands of immigrants live in Virginia illegally. Most of them are part of the subterranean economy; they don’t pay taxes. But they demand a lot in the way of services. Now, I don’t need to be reminded how much legal immigrants contribute to this country. I know they do. But I’ve got a real big problem when illegals get a free ride… I don’t like it when Americans get a free ride, and I don’t like it any better when illegal immigrants get a free ride. And it gets be downright angry when many illegals appear to feel entitled to the benefits extended to citizens.

Plus, I’ve got to say, it really frosts me to see millions of illegals exercising their freedom of assembly in this country and waving the Mexican flag. You like Mexico so much? Then why are you here? Ethnic pride is fine — no one’s asking you to disown your ethnic identity. But let me give you a hint: When you come to this country illegally and start demanding the same rights as the natives, but don’t talk about taking on the same obligations — such as, oh, paying taxes!! — it’s not a good idea to gather by the millions and flaunt your loyalty to the old country. That really ticks people off.

Now, I admit that the illegals are not entirely to blame for the current state of affairs. There are plenty of Americans who like having them here. Many Americans who are affluent enough to employ domestic labor — maids, housekeepers, nannies, landscapers — enjoy the fact that illegals are willing to work for so little. But let’s get one thing straight: Illegals aren’t cheap because they’re exploited — they’re cheap because they don’t pay no stinkin’ taxes!

Alvaro and his helper come to my house two hours, once a week. My wife and I insist that he pay taxes, and we report his income to the IRS, and we pay more than the prevailing rate. So, I’ve got to say, it really frosts me knowing that many of my contemporaries are paying less for house cleaners because they’re paying the help under the table….

Here’s who else really frosts me — liberals. Many of them are all too happy to expand the entitlements of U.S. citizens to illegal immigrants. Health care, public schools, college tuitions, you name it. There’s nothing that makes a liberal’s day like expanding entitlements. I don’t doubt that they’re motivated by compassion towards the less fortunate, but there’s an element of political opportunism in what they do. Let’s put it this way: If 90 percent of the immigrants were anti-Castro, Republican-leaning Cubans, I bet the liberals would be singing a different tune!

Here’s who I can’t understand — African Americans. A disproportionate number of them are trapped at the bottom of the economic ladder in Virginia, working in many of the same kinds of domestic and manual labor jobs the illegals are taking over. If the country weren’t awash with abundant, illegal labor, the wages for domestic and manual labor would well be double what they are today. Why is income inequality increasing in this country? Why can’t janitors and housekeepers make a living wage? It’s not because of big, greedy corporations — it’s because of supply and demand…. It’s the influx of illegal labor that drives wages down.

It’s a crazy world. My friend Alvaro may not speak the best English, but he’s one of the few people I talk to who makes any sense.

The Wall Street Journal ran a front-page article last week profiling the rebels who were sabotaging oil infrastructure in the Nigerian river delta. They aren’t anti-American — they’re fighting the central government. But the effect is the same. During a period when energy supplies are incredibly tight around the world, rebels in the most obscure trouble spots have the ability to push up the global price of petroleum.

What does that have to do with Virginia? Plenty. As much as the United States as a nation is vulnerable to disruptions in global oil supplies, Virginia is even more vulnerable. That fact seems irrefutable in light of information passed along by reader Larry Gross. Two data points:

• Even by the porcine standards of the United States, Virginians are energy hogs, judging by a chart prepared by the California Energy Commission. Americans consumed 464 gallons of gasoline per capita in 2004. Virginians consumed 527 gallons — more than 13 percent more.
• In a survey of the vulnerability of the 50 largest U.S. cities to oil price shocks, “Washington, D.C.” scored fairly well at 11th best prepared. But Virginia Beach (Hampton Roads) ranked 46th! And the good news for Washington isn’t as good as it seems. If the authors of the SustainLane study had considered Northern Virginia separately from the District of Columbia, I’m quite certain the region would have scored even worse.

The General Assembly passed an energy bill this year which sought to improve Virginia’s energy supplies. That’s fine. Increasing domestic energy supplies and diversifying our foreign sources of supply are good ideas. But that’s only part of the solution. The piece the General Assembly neglects is conservation…. which means finding ways to get Virginians to drive less.

Unfortunately, while the General Assembly seeks to stabilize energy supplies on the one hand, it seeks to compound our dependence upon imported foreign petroleum on the other. Confronted with the rising cost of asphalt, the Senate response has been: Raise taxes and spend whatever it takes. Confronted with a steady escalation in Vehicle Miles Driven, the Senate response has been: Build more roads… and while we’re at it, throw some money at mass transit, too, because it makes us look progressive, but mostly spend the money on roads.

One of the heretical notions advanced by the House of Delegates in the 2006 taxes-and-transportation debate is this: By funding pin-point projects that address specific transportation bottlenecks, Virginia can address traffic congestion more efficiently than by channeling new revenues through the traditional transportation funding formula, which spreads the money all around the state. Maybe, just maybe, Virginia really doesn’t need to raise an additional $108 billion over the next 20 years like the Axis of Taxes says it does.

Giving credence to this view is a report by David Hartgen, a professor at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, which reader Whitney Duff has brought to my attention. Hartgen argues that it would cost a mere $8.5 billion over the next 20 years to relieve “severe congestion” around the state.

The implication is that Virginia spends money on roads for lots of reasons that have nothing to do with relieving congestion, a fact that you’d never suspect given the way traffic congestion is cited to justify raising taxes by $1 billion a year. But, remarkably, as Hartgen observes, only two of Virginia’s Metropolitan Planning Organizations — Fredericksburg and Harrisonburg — mention congestion relief as a stated goal in their long-range transportation plans.

Hartgen argues that the General Assembly should make traffic congestion relief a major priority in the allocation of construction dollars, just as Atlanta and Texas recently have done. (Atlanta, famed for its sprawling road network, has raised the weight placed on congestion relief from 11 to 70 percent.) To read “talking points” based on Hartgen’s study, click here.

Given the fact that traffic congestion is the cause celebre for raising taxes, one would expect that someone, somewhere, would have conducted some analysis on exactly how Virginia prioritizes its spending for new construction projects. To what extent does Virginia fund congestion-relief projects as opposed to projects that, say, open up new land for development even if there is no immediate demand for those roads? (Does Richmond’s Route 288 ring a bell?) It’s a fundamental question, and it’s reckless to raise taxes without knowing the answer.

Sporting a new look, the venerable Almanac of Virginia Politics: 2006 is now available. The Almanac was originally published by Flora Crater and the Women’s Activist Fund “as a way to empower citizens – especially women and other minorities – realizing that voters need to have concise and comprehensive information on the actions of their representatives in government.” As the editors and publishers advanced in age, they found it difficult to continue putting out the annual volume which focuses on Virginia’s state legislators. Now, the publication is a project of George Mason University. According to George Mason, “Larry Sabato…has called [the Almanac] ‘an enormously useful volume for any election watcher in the Old Dominion.’”

The Almanac’s new editor is Dr. Toni-Michelle Travis, associate professor of government & politics and the director of the African-American Studies program. It is published by the Kendall Hunt Publishing Company which says that the 2006 edition “provides raw data for political analyses of Virginia’s legislators. Data from the 2005 legislative session is combined with the latest results from the November 2005 election, and personal and political information is provided for each legislator. This timely and unique publication provides for those seeking to grasp the components of Virginia’s legislative politics and pertinent information about each legislator, and serves as an essential reference tool.”

With a new home, the 2006 volume is physically larger, has a glossier cover, and includes analysis of the 2005 elections and a synopsis of bills sponsored and passed by each legislator. It also includes new elements, such as ratings of legislators by major interests groups and overlays of state legislative districts with congressional districts. The publication is also physically larger. According to Travis, “It looks different from Flora’s version.” Now that the 2006 edition is out, preparation for the 2007 edition is underway as the General Assembly is still wrapping up its work. Travis says that “I begin to write the next edition so I can discuss key legislation.” The 2006 Almanac can be purchased via the George Mason bookstore.

I need to read Michael Shear’s reporting at the WaPo more consistently. He illuminates a variety of perspectives I haven’t seen covered by Virginia’s other major dailies. Here’s a month-old article he wrote about the on-again, off-again relationship between Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and Virginia’s smart growth movement: “On Road Funding, Kaine Finds Slow-Growth Camp Is No Ally.”

If you want to understand the dynamics of the taxes-and-transportation debate, the article is still worth reading.