Bacon's Rebellion

Not long ago, I called Ellen Qualls, former Gov. Mark Warner’s press secretary, in the hope of living up an interview after he left office. My thought was to do a retrospective on his administration: successes, failures, lessons learned, etc. Naively, I thought it would be easier for the governor to carve out time after he left office than while he was still encumbered with official duties. Not so. If anything, Qualls told me, Warner would be busier. The national press, it seems, is displaying a tremendous amount of interest in Virginia’s ex-Guv.

The national press may be liberal. The national press may, in its heart of hearts, want Hillary Clinton to win the Democratic nomination. But if there’s one thing that the national press loves even more than its liberalism, it’s a good horse race. And right now, Warner is shaping up as the un-Hilllary. If nothing else, Warner promises to make the 2008 election campaign more exciting than a Hillary shoe-in!

An article profiling Warner appeared in the most recent edition of National Review (unfortunately, not available online). Author John J. Miller knocked Warner for unnecessarily raising taxes in 2004 (sound familiar?) but was otherwise fairly sympathetic. He quotes Ed Kilgore of the Democratic Leadership Council as follows:

He’s a brilliant political strategist. He’s like Bill Clinton that way — he’s a better political strategist than any of the people he can hire as consultants.

Miller also noted that Warner managed to pull in $2.5 million in a Forward Together fund raising party, and that he’s hired lefty blogger Jerome Armstrong to contribute to the F.T. website, presumably “a subtle bid to build enthusiasm among the activist segment of the party’s base.”

Ms. Clinton has a lot of baggage — it’s not played up in the national media, but a number of her political cronies are under investigation for scandalous doings, which I’m too weary to recite here. She’s also prone to making extravagant statements, such as the one she made recently in a speech to an African-American audience, comparing the U.S. House of Representatives to a “plantation.” Warner, by contrast, is squeaky clean, and he’s much more temperate in his language. At a minimum, he would run very well in Southern states. If the national media chooses to anoint him as the most credible alternative to Clinton, he has a decent shot at winning the nomination.

The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star has outlined the legislative agenda advanced by Speaker William J. Howell and other senior members of the House of Delegates. Highlights:

• Cut taxes: eliminate the estate tax, create a “back to school” sales tax holiday, and revive the phase-out of the car tax, which was frozen during hard budget times several years ago.
• Clean up the Bay: Dedicate $500 million over 10 years to Chesapeake Bay clean-up.
• Reform Health Care: Create individual “health savings accounts,” create tax credits to encourage people to buy private long-term health-care insurance, and allow small businesses to band together to buy employee health care.
• Reform Transportation Oversight: Allow the legislature, rather than the governor, to appoint some members of the Commonwealth Transportation Board; create a commission to oversee agencies with transportation authority; and let local governments award contracts for local roads.

Del. Leo Wardrup, chairman of the transportation committee, also proposes shifting revenue streams from the General Fund to the Transportation Trust Fund to pay for additional transportation improvements.

Anyone who has seen the animated movie “Pocahontas” will recall how politically correct the encounter between the English and Indians was portrayed. Rather than exploring the encounter of two mutually uncomprehending cultures, the writers depicted the Indians as noble savages and the English (with the exception of John Smith) as arrogant, violent buffoons. If there was anything remotely virtuous about the founding of the first permanent, English-speaking colony in the New World, it couldn’t be found here.

Now comes New Line Cinema with a real-actor version of the Pocahontas-John Smith story: “The New World.” And Virginia Indians aren’t happy about it. In a press release floated on PR Newswire (it’s not clear who released it), Karenne Wood (Monacan), chair of theVirginia Council on Indians and a PhD candidate in anthropology at the University of Virginia, complained that the movie reproduced the discredited story about the young Pocahontas saving Smith from execution by throwing her body across him. Over and above that flaw, Wood said, “Our women appear as either princesses or squaws, and our men are either noble or warlike.”

The press release continues: “Particularly offensive to Virginia Indian women is the characterization of Pocahontas as the object of Smith’s physical desire, even though she was only 11 or 12 when they met, and Smith was closer to 30. The role is played by a 14-year-old actress.”

As a backdrop to the criticism, Virginia’s Indians are frustrated, too, by the way the film is tied to the promotion of the 400th anniversary of Jamestown’s founding, while they have yet received the federal status enjoyed by some 567 other Indian tribes.

I haven’t seen the movie yet, so I can’t comment — other than to say, “The New World” can’t possibly be worse than “Pocahontas”…. Can it?

Here at SYNERGY/Planning we are a little weary of “new” as well as used ideas to solve the mobility and access crisis. We suggest all must be wary of those proposing “solutions” that do not include Fundamental Change in human settlement patterns and Fundamental Change in governance structure.

First let us outline some of the background for our position on access and mobility innovation:

We have advocated village and community scale applications of telework to eliminate vehicular trip demand since 1969. All we have seen so far are pork barrel “telework centers” and individual / small scale, scattered-site applications which do little to address core mobility and access dysfunction. The number of “telecommuters” seem impressive to those who do not take into account the impact of the scattered location of the users.

In the early 70s we supervised and coordinated the development of a sketch plan for a 150,000 population energy self-sufficient Planned New Community for our client Weyerhaeuser Corp which owned the 26,000 acre site. Food, fiber and employment would be based on the resources of the site and adjacent land owned by Weyerhaeuser. Energy was to come from a combination of solar applications and waste recycling. Mobility and access was to be provided by a hybrid private / shared vehicle system designed by project-partner Ford Motor Co. Ironically, Ford’s reaction to the October 1973 Arab Oil Embargo killed that project.

One of our efforts to articulate region-wide settlement pattern and mobility / access solutions was outlined in “Down Memory Lane with Katrina,” 5 September 2005″ at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com .

Since the 80s we have advocated weight-distance fees to pay for the maintenance of roadways. In 1984 we outlined, with others, a proposal to use the reversible lanes on Shirley Highway / I-395 as variable-fee HOV lanes (aka, Hot Lanes). That was over 20 years ago and these are now among the “new” ideas on the table.

We have advanced these “new” ideas not just as a consultant, a professor and an author but also as a board member, committee chair and committee member of some of the largest business organizations in the Commonwealth and as a representative of one of the most influential enterprises in the northern part of Virginia.

Now there is a fresh generation of advocates of “new” ideas like public-private partnerships and private sector funding of transport facilities. These acolytes seem to be driven as much by ideology as by the desire to improve mobility and access. But are they “new” ideas and will they improve mobility and access?

The advocates of “new” ideas were well represented at the recent conference on public-private partnerships. As we note in the End Note Two of “The Devil’s Dance,” (3 January 2006 at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com ), this conference addressed a number of topics that need to be considered if we are to solve mobility and access dysfunction. The ideas put on the table were summarized in three columns in the 3 January issue of Bacons Rebellion.

Here are some thoughts on the “new” ideas that were raised at the conference:

First it is not the 19th century where we find the most widespread application of private sector construction of roadways in the Commonwealth. Between 1965 and 2005 far more lane miles of roadway in Virginia were designed, paid-for and built by the private sector than by public funds.
Prof. Gary Johnson provides data on the extent of some of these roadways in his guest column “A Modest Plan” in the 16 June issue of Bacons Rebellion.

Most of those miles of new roadways were turned over to VDOT to maintain. Others were turned over to quasi governments created to own and maintain common roadways, parking lots and openspace for which existing municipalities and the state were unwilling to assume responsibility. Some of the roadways are still owned and maintained by private enterprises.

In summary, far more lane-miles of roadway and acres of asphalt to support autonomobility were designed and paid for by the private sector that the public sector. We believe that a good argument can be made that, had the public been required to pay for these roadways (much less understood the settlement pattern impact of these facilities), there may well have been far more public scrutiny and a greater understanding that this “private” contribution was building the wrong system in wrong place.

This is why understanding the big picture is important: Over the past 85 years the governance structure has failed to evolve. Elected and appointed governance practitioners have ducked their responsibility to create new governance structures at regional level and at neighborhood, village and community scales. They have left it to the private sector to do what the private sector does best: Lobbying for and establishing land use and transport processes that make the most money possible in the shortest period of time for those in control.

Citizens have been hoodwinked because governance practitioners have left it to private sector to create quasi governments (aka, Homes Associations) to be responsible for many small scale governance responsibilities. These same governance practitioners have completely failed to evolve village, community, subregional and regional governance structure. One major aspect of this failure is that the majority of a transport system that does not work. See “From Myth to Law,” 29 November 2004 and “Regional Rigor Mortis,” 6 June 2005.

In his column on the public-private partnership conference (“Roads and Reason,” 3 January 2006), Jim Bacon articulated the core principle with which most participants agree:

“From the standpoint of economic efficiency, transportation should be a ‘user pay’ system.”

Who could disagree with that?

Well, before we figure out how to pay, we need to figure out what to pay for. Any transport system in which there is public or private investment should provide mobility and access for a desired human settlement pattern.

Let us get first things first. Lets answer first order questions before we answer fourth, fifth and sixth order questions. Before we come up with slick ways to raise money, there must be a plan for what will be done with the money. The National Capital Subregion is marching toward the implementation of a system of Hot Lanes build by public-private partnerships before anyone has considered how these new facilities will impact the existing human settlement patterns much less whether HOT lanes will contribute to the evolution of functional and sustainable patterns and densities of land use.

As noted in our last post ( “The Short Term Fix For Kaine” ) we must understand the impact and functionality of all VDOT programs before we spend public or private funds on them.

So much for the “new” ideas. Now what about the “used” ideas? The 16 January issue of Bacons Rebellion offers three columns on mobility and access that are a dictionary of “used” ideas:

Guest Columnist William Vincent offers three: Improved “buses”, “transit” as part of HOT lanes and telecommuting. Setting aside the problems with language, the three ideas are an absolute sink-hole for public money without Fundamental Change in human settlement patterns.

Stalwart Columnist Patrick McSweeney is still mired in vocabulary issues. See “Babble Postscript,” 3 January 2006 at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com. For this reason it is not as clear as it could be that, as noted above, the next step is not to “tap the creativity of the private sector” but to understand what settlement pattern is desired on a regional scale and then what system of transport will provide mobility and access to that configuration of human activity. Finally society must allocated the costs of that system fairly and equitably.

Guest Columnist Prof. Gary Johnson offers a “Modest Proposal.” His ten points are not as radical as those of Jonathan Swift, in fact they are downright reasonable. Most of his points are well taken and his historical perspective is sound.

It is not until one gets to Johnson’s last point about the transportation problems in “rural” Virginia that it is clear that “new” or “used” ideas have no chance of solving the problems of mobility and access unless there is an understanding of the need for Fundamental Change in human settlement patterns and Fundamental Change in governance structure. So long as persons of good will believe that “rural” still exists in 2006, society will never solve the mobility and access crisis or the equally critical shelter crisis. That is the challenge of PROPERTY DYNAMICS.

In the meantime, more money or ways to raise money will make both mobility / access and shelter worse until there is a rational basis for spending the money. As the “private” investment in “suburban” / subdivision roadways shows, money paves the road to nowhere.

EMR

Gov. Tim Kaine outlined a fairly ambitious agenda in his first speech to the General Assembly. Read it here.

The Governor covered education, economic development, Medicaid reform, emergency preparedness, Cheapeake Bay clean-up, local property tax relief and, of course… transportation. We will address these topics in future posts.

I got this email today:

Dear Mr Atticus,

If you are going to address and attack state government, it might help to understand how state budgets work. In your column today posted in Bacons Rebellion, you claim that state agencies are billing the taxpayer for alcohol purchases and even singled out Virginia Tech….” only Tech, JMU and CNU billed the Commonwealth for their alcohol.” Not true, at least not at Virginia Tech.

Actually, the opposite is the case. In effect, those are sales. If you would drill down further in that on-line auditor’s report you referenced, you would see that the Virginia Tech “purchases” were for an “auxiliary”….in this case, the on-campus hotel and conference center. Yes, they sell alcohol, both in the public restaurant and in their banquet operations. The purchases for alcohol (which is later resold) would appear in an auditor’s report because all state auxiliary funds are technically state funds. They are dubbed non-general fund….meaning their sources are other than state taxpayer dollars. Taxpayer dollars come from the “general fund.” The report you referenced doesn’t distinguish between non-general and general fund.

I can assure you that the sources of those sales are not state taxpayer dollars. Any alcohol purchases in The Inn at Virginia Tech would come from personal or other private sources and not state taxpayer funds. The state and the university have strict rules prohibiting the use of state dollars for such purchases.

Larry Hincker
Associate Vice President
University Relations
Virginia Tech
314 Burruss Hall
Blacksburg, VA 24061
540 231 5396
[email protected]

First, any errors I made (you should look up the site yourself – see the instructions in my op ed in this Bacon’s Rebellion), are wholly my own. Dumb me, when you look at state expenditures and see alcholic beverages, how was I to know that was money made in selling booze, not buying booze. They report spending money on alcholic beverages to sell them at a profit? Maybe the State Auditor can expand his on-line information to show with color codes what pot of money the money comes from – like ‘technically state money’ – as I suggest in the op ed.

Second, a state employee accuses me of ‘attacking state government’. I wrote an op ed critical of spending and not knowing what we spend on (which clearly I don’t know) – not ‘attacking state government’. Gosh, a bit sensitive aren’t we? So, did a taxpayer employee criticize a citizen for his exercise of free speech as an official of Tech or as a private citizen on Tech time, equipment and facilities? See, that sort of knee-jerk criticism to inquiry is why so many administrators earn the title ‘educrats’.

Third, I wonder why he addressed his email to my middle name. We’ve never met. Go figure.

The Jan. 16, 2006, edition of Bacon’s Rebellion is now online. Click here to read it.

Personal story. When I was a senior in HS (Yorktown, Arlingon Co.) I got a one-week job as an electrician’s helper (I carried stuff) to work setting up for the 1968 Cherry Blossom festival. Day one we set around the Washington Monument and theater. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr got murdered. Day two when I went to the guy’s shop in the Clarendon neighborhood we could see smoke coming up from DC. We went in to get this guy’s equipment. His van was the only vehicle going into the city.

He had a CB and would call out, “They’re 4 blocks away.” As the rioting got closer and closer. I saw the first convoy of soldiers in trucks come down Independence Ave and stop in the middle. A DC cop and an Army officer looked at a map on the hood of a jeep and then literally circled The White House with troops. School buses loaded with police hurried by.

The rioters got to 2 blocks away. When we left, we could see them on 14th St. running back and forth. I missed my Pulitzer prize photo of smoke billowing across the Mall and making a wreath around the Capitol. We got stuck behind the traffic jam getting out of the city and didn’t get home until after 7. I couldn’t understand, then, why my parents were so upset. They had had no idea where I was.

About 6 weeks later we had a community meeting in the Yorktown HS gym on a Saturday morning. Leaders from DC and VA talked. Why was there a riot? What should be done? etc. Marion Barry spoke.

Marion Barry was articulate and passionate. He was one of the most charismatic men I have ever seen. I saw only a few leaders in the Army who had the real deal, charisma. Many wished and faked. None surpassed Marion Barry.

It is a personal tragedy that Marion Barry lost so much to drugs and alcohol. He had such incredible potential.

It is a National triumph what has happened since 1968. Of course, it started long before that. Even before the War of Northern Aggression. Fulfilling the potential of the Declaration of Independence to acknowledge all men are created equal is awesome.

Moreover, the morally superior and ascendant idea of racial integration is a triumph of right over wrong, good over evil. The concept of racial equality is a profoundly Judeo-Christian concept that bore fruit in the fullness of time – and after huge sacrifices and hard work – and national sin and shame.

It’s great to celebrate Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday as a symbol of America’s Civil Rights victory.

It’s sad to see how low Marion Barry went personnally and most of the Civil Rights leadership went politically since 1972. Multiculturalism, affirmative action (quotas not outreach), set asides etc. are the new racism. Hopefully, and hope is not a method, more and more Americans will reject the bitter politics of race baiting and follow the intellectual leaders – Thomas Sowell, Alan Keyes, Walter Williams, etc and political leaders like J.C. Watts, Condoleeza Rice, etc. to make The Dream come true – completely.

In today’s WAPO, Mike Shear reports on what a source told him that Governor Kaine will say tonight about solving the Commonwealths mobility and access crisis.

None of the proposals will make much difference in the short term (or in the long term) as has been pointed our since mid-2005 when Kaine’s program started to emerge. The measures outlined will not address the need to balance transportation system capacity with the travel demand of current and planned settlement patterns. They will not address the simple free market solution to transportation dysfunction: Charging the full and equitable cost of all citizen, agency, enterprise and institution location decisions.

As our colleague Jim Bacon says at least Kaine is addressing the land use / transportation issue and that is a start. The proposals will, at the very best, smoke out some of the obstacles to real solutions.

There is one thing Kaine could do tomorrow morning that would not require the legislature or municipal governments to take any action and would have immediate impact.

Kaine could require by executive order that all VDOT projects not yet under contract be reevaluated to determine the impact of the project in the context of the planned and zoned land use in the project service shed. This is an easy, simple step that, if carried out with diligence, would have profound impact and would open the real discussion of land use / transport relationships.

For an example of the details of such a review process, see our Backgrounder “Anatomy of a Bottleneck,” 14 August 2002 and “The Role of Municipal Panning in Creating Dysfunctional Human Settlement Patterns,” 23 January 2002 both at www.baconsreblellion.com.

OK this is not a short term “fix” for transport but it is a way to keep congestion from getting worse, faster.

EMR

Last week was a good news/bad news week for Virginia’s gay,lesbian,bisexual and transgender citizens.

The good news was that Governor Kaine continued the ban on discrimination based on sexual orientation in his Executive Order 1 setting equal employment opportunity policy for the Commonwealth’s workforce. [He also added protections for veterans to the policy.]

The bad news was that the House of Delegates passed the 2nd resolution on the so-called marriage amendment and the bill setting the ballot question, moving us one step closer to a statewide referendum.

The proposed amendment to the Constitution would define marriage as between one man and one woman and bar creation or recognition of civil unions, domestic partnerships or other legal status for all unmarried relationships (gay or straight).

The language of the proposal now wending its way to the voters is so broad and so vague it threatens continued prosecution of domestic violence cases involving unmarried couples. See this discussion of what’s happening in Ohio which has identical language in its amendment. And, this on other issues.

Why are we rushing to amend our constitution with language no one understands?

Beats me. It’s not like there’s an emergency. We’ve had a ban on gay marriage in Virginia since 1975 (more than three decades!) without a single legal challenge. We’ve had a ban on recognizing gay marriages from other states since 1997. And, we’ve banned civil unions, domestic partnerships and other legal agreements for gay couples since 2004. There’s been no direct legal challenge to any of these laws, and only one case in which the civil unions law has been raised…by a judge (activist?) who reached out to cite it in refusing to recognize a custody order from another state’s courts.

Read traditionalist arguments for marriage equality for gays and lesbians on the Volkh Conspiracy

And for arguments against the proposed amendment now working its way through the Virginia legislature look here and here

As we remember Martin Luther King today and pray for his widow’s recovery from her stroke, we should reflect on what Coretta Scott King has said about issues of equality for gays and lesbians:

“I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people and I should stick to the issue of racial justice,” she said. “But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’” “I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream to make room at the table of brother- and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people,” she said. – Reuters, March 31, 1998.

“We have a lot more work to do in our common struggle against bigotry and discrimination. I say “common struggle” because I believe very strongly that all forms of bigotry and discrimination are equally wrong and should be opposed by right-thinking Americans everywhere. Freedom from discrimination based on sexual orientation is surely a fundamental human right in any great democracy, as much as freedom from racial, religious, gender, or ethnic discrimination.” – Coretta Scott King, remarks, Opening Plenary Session, 13th annual Creating Change conference of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Atlanta, Georgia, November 9, 2000.

Ironic that the House will take a formal vote on enshrining discrimination against gays and lesbians in the Virginia constitution on Martin Luther King Day, isn’t it?

Disclosure: As indicated in my profile, I lobby for Equality Virginia, the Commonwealth’s leading advocacy group for Virginia’s GLBT citizens.

As the Cadillac add bellows: “BREAKTHROUGH!!!”

There now seems to be agreement between SYNERGY/Planning and some who have spilled millions of bites trying to discount the relevance of our work. They agree that congestion (the lack of vehicular mobility) is growing worse every year.

We argue that the measures of vehicular immobility leave much to be desired – see “Spinning Data, Spinning Wheels,” (30 September 2004) concerning the 2002 figures and revisited for 2003 in “Regional Rigor Mortis,” (6 June 2005).

More important, the transport strategies propounded by MainStream Media, the Autonomobility Lobby, the Land Development Interests and pandering politicians endanger the prosperity, security and sustainability of contemporary civilization.

Now comes the question about the measures of “accessibility.” Accessibility is the companion of “mobility” in the fundamental equations that must be addressed if there is to be balance between transport system capacity and settlement pattern generated travel demand.

How do you measure accessibility? May I introduce an old friend? Meet Adam Smith.

For reasons we document in The Shape of the Future, and explore in our column “Wild Abandonment,” (8 September 2003) the best measure of accessibility is the market. We can measure accessibility by the market even though what now exists is not a free market or an intelligent market. The current market for the built environment is wracked by counterproductive subsidies but it is still a market with a clear message.

This market documents that a three bedroom rancher within R= ½ Mile of Ballston METRO is worth eight times as much as the same house on a ten times bigger lot that is within a ten minute drive of the Bealeton 7-11.

This market documents that a house on .2 acres within the Clear Edge around Greater Warrenton is worth $200,000 more than the same house on five acres near Clevengers Corners (seven or eight miles to the west) and $100,000 more than the same house on five times as much land in a West Prince William “subdivision.” The West Prince William house is 10 miles closer to the centroid of jobs in the National Capital Subregion but is not convenient to most of the other things that citizens want to live near.

(NB: The numbers used here were documented in April 2003 and have not yet been recalibrated to reflect the last 2 ½ years of rapid escalation because of the equally dramatic readjustment that are likely to occur over the next year.)

These same market forces have put a premium on houses in Planned New Communities with densities of at least 10 persons per acre and a balance of jobs / houses / services / recreation / amenity as compared with the same house by the same builder in scattered subdivisions. This has been the case for four decades. We summarized these locational variations in “The $100,000 Difference” section of “The Shape of Loudoun County’s Future” which was widely circulated prior to the 1999 election in Loudoun County.

The same forces work at higher densities. Dwellings in isolated I-395 Condo Canyon projects would be worth much more if the were adjacent to Georgetown, Old Town, Reston Town Center or even Shirlington Village Center.

The numbers change but the relative differences do not. Citizens will pay more for accessible places to live, work and seek services.

To create functional settlement patterns society must fundamentally change to create more of the places where people want to be and fewer of the places they have to be because they have no choice. We outline six overarching stategies to achieve that goal in The Shape of the Future.

The most important step toward creating functional settlement patterns is to charge the full, equitable cost of the 40 +/- location variable goods and services that make contemporary urban civilization possible. At least 96% of the households in the Untied States are urban households. When they are all paying their fair share they will sort themselves out into functional patterns and densities leaving plenty of room and few costs to be paid by those who choose derive their income from nonurban activities and to live nonurban lives.

At SYNERGY/Planning, we call the process of creating functional places “the evolution of Balanced Communities in sustainable New Urban Regions” and the basic driving force is paying ones fair share of location variable costs. This process requires open, intelligent markets for land and buildings. The creation of these markets is a major goal of PROPERTY DYNAMICS and reflects the “The Five Critical Realities the Shape the Future” which is a Backgrounder available at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com

Of course just collecting the highest price dooryards, clusters, neighborhoods and villages together is not enough to create Balanced Communities but the market provides a place to start sorting out patterns and densities and demonstrating the the market value of accessibility.

Also note that the free market way to lower the cost of great places is to build more of them, not to build cheaper, less desireable ones.

Post Script: Do not come with that weak stuff about the price of well located structures being higher because they cost more to build or maintain them. How many buyers will pay builder “A” more than builder “B” for the same product because builder “A” has higher costs? That is what Adam Smiths invisable hand (aka, the market) is all about.

Poorly located buildings (what real estate agents call “more house / building / square feet for the dollar”) are to some extent priced lower because of unwarranted and / or unintended subsidies. These subsidies are most often the result of the failure to pay the full cost of location decisions. It is also true that they are priced lower because that is all someone will pay. Few sellers price their real estate lower just because it cost them less to build or they bought it or the land upon which it sits at a firesale.

EMR

A reporter from the Augusta Free Press sent me the questions below for an article. No idea what he will write, but here’s my piece.

1. Do you feel that Lee-Jackson Day has gotten the short end of the stick, so to speak, with the split of the holidays in Virginia?

No. Lee-Jackson Day is secondary to Martin Luther King Jr. Day because MLK is a Federal holiday. Federal holidays carry more weight, just like the Federal government does. Folks notice when the Post Office closes.

2. Did you prefer the way it was done until 2000-2001 – with Lee-Jackson Day and MLK Day being noted on the same day?

The combination holiday of King-Lee-Jackson was uniquely Virginian, but it’s history. The combination isn’t coming back. A separate day for MLK answered Black political sensitivities for separate, stand-alone recognition and respect.

3. Is there a stigma attached to celebrating the efforts of Confederate heroes? If so, what can be done to overcome that stigma?

Stigma? Duh.

Send a politician separate invitations to a MLK and a Lee-Jackson celebration on different dates and see what response you get. Elected officials fear anything taiknted ‘Confederate’, especially the Confederate Battle Flag, more than Dracula fears the cross, a wooden stake, a mirror and morning sunlight – combined. Find out how many public schools (out of 134 systems) take off on Lee-Jackson Day. Go to any 100 schools (K-12) and check out how many bulletin boards recognize Lee-Jackson and how many highlight MLK. Do the same for assemblies and guest speakers. Lee and Jackson are part of the Standards of Learning (SOLs), but are ignored as a state holiday because they are politically incorrect.

The three reasons that Lee and Jackson are ignored suggest the answers to fix the problem.

Culture War. The same Liberals who declare War on CHRISTmas can’t stand Lee and Jackson because they served the Confederacy – which equals racism in their paradigm, were devout Christians and heroic warriors. The Liberals who control most of the media and public education simply are following their agenda. Since culture ‘commands’ in a civilization, the winner, Liberal or Conservative, of the U. S. Culture War will predominate in politics, the media and public education. Conservatives have lost the main stream media and government schools for now. Much can be done in public communication, like the decade plus dramatic shift towards pro-life attitudes, if someone has the resources – money.

Historical Ignorance. The History SOLs had to be ‘re-normalized’, dumbed down, because so few schools could pass them, right? When the teachers don’t know history or teach the Liberal trinity of race, class and gender(s) (as my youngest daughters AP History textbook bragged) then Lee and Jackson will not be honored appropriately. Years ago in Arlington, I learned my 4th grade Virginia history from a New York City native, Mrs. Scharf, who cheerfully taught us that Lee and Jackson were heroes indeed. I also learned history from walking the battlefields with my grandfather and father. Keeping alive the oral history at home for Virginians with ancestral ties Lee and Jackson is important. Newer Virginians can learn and share the same common historical heritage by visiting our many Civil War sites – just as they would visit Colonial Williamsburg, Yorktown and Jamestown as part of our common history.

Evolving Culture. Cultures evolve or die. Virginia as part of Southern culture is changing its identity. The culture used to be so powerful that most, even newly arrived, immigrants from the North and foreign lands joined their Virginia neighbors of a few years to take up arms in 1861 against their relatives and absolute strangers. 6 out of 7 Black slaves stayed on their farms, even after the Union Army conquered, and many, slave and free, served the South in war. Today, the power of our culture with many, many more immigrants from the North and foreign lands is less powerful. And it’s profoundly different. Southern culture isn’t about being a sovereign nation. Southern culture isn’t about race any more for the White majority. Southern culture is about Christian identity with Bible reading and believing, as well as absolute, unchanging, truths in the Ten Commandments, Declaration of Independence, and Constitution, extended families, love of land, sense of place, men are men and women are women, honor, personal freedom, more fun-loving than money/work-driven, admiration for the military and willingness to fight.

4. Other thoughts on this issue.

What is right for the future? Not a worship of the past, but pushing the best of the past forward. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is the symbol of victory of the Civil Rights movement. The morally superior idea of racial integration was a victory for all Virginians. Lee and Jackson should be seen as symbols of military genius, devotion to duty, and honorable leadership that motivated unparalleled acts of courage by all kinds of Virginians. Dr. King will get more recognition as a fact of life in a Federally-dominated America. Yet, Lee and Jackson deserve considerable recognition, significantly more than today, for future Virginians to follow their example as heroes. All three heroes need to be carried into the future as part of our Virginia culture. It’s up to the Good People of Virginia to make it so.

Gov. Mark R. Warner may well be remembered in history as the “good government” governor. Arguably, he has done more than any of his predecessors to bring best business practices to Virginia state government — no mean accomplishment when you consider that Virginia was already considered one of the two or three best run states in the country long before Warner came to office.

In his farewell speech to the General Assembly, Warner noted that government operations is a topic he gets “jazzed” about, and he listed a number of accomplishments. (I add my comments in italics.)

• We’ve maintained our triple-A bond rating – one of only six states in the nation to have that sterling credit rating. (Warner did a great job responding to the last recession with timely spending cuts. Too bad he felt he had to raise taxes after the crisis had passed. See previous post.)
• We’ve leveraged the state’s buying power with centralized purchasing – savings more than $95 million in fiscal year 2005 alone. (True. But don’t forget, Warner is building on procurement reform launched under Gov. Jim Gilmore.)
• We’ve improved collection of money owed the state, producing over 110 million more dollars each year. (Kudos!)
• We’re finally managing real estate more like a business would, which could save more than $68 million over the next decade. (More kudos! Under Warner, the state has developed the first-ever comprehensive inventory of its real estate assets and obligations. Now it’s time to take the next step and track real estate utilization — find out how much of that office space is actually being used.)
• We’ve undertaken school efficiency reviews in 9 school divisions, identifying almost $10 million in annual savings – a figure that will grow as more divisions participate. (Kudos. But in a multi billion-dollar budget, it’s only a start.)
• Virginia leads the states in a cutting-edge consolidation of information technology. (Double kudos. This initiative hasn’t saved as much money as hoped, but it has significantly improved the quality and security of the state’s IT infrastructure. Also, giving credit where credit is due, Warner aggressively used public-private partnership legislation that the Gilmore administration had put into place.)
• And for the first time in history, we’ve fully replenished our Rainy Day Fund to its Constitutional maximum of more than a Billion dollars. (Bravo!)

I’ve heard many stories, none of which have made it into print or even onto the blog, of the businesslike attitude that Warner has brought to government. Rest assured, this list of accomplishments is an abbreviated one. The Governor and his team deserve a lot of credit for Virginia’s rating by Governing Magazine as the best run state in the country. Let us hope that Gov.-elect Tim Kaine can maintain that distinction.

Gov. Mark R. Warner will go to his grave insisting, in the face of massive and recurring state budget surpluses, that the 2004 tax increases were needed. He sounded that theme again in his final speech yesterday to the General Assembly:

Two years ago, I came before you to tell you that the fruits of our [budget-cutting] labor had not been enough. Our first-ever six year financial plan showed that we faced a structural imbalance well into the future. It made us an unfit partner to local governments, a fair-weather friend to public education, and a weakening credit risk to Wall Street investors. …

Together, we hammered out our competing visions for the Commonwealth. Together, we achieved our goals of restored fiscal integrity. Together, we developed a fairer and more equitable tax code. Together, we made critical investments in education, public safety, and the core services of government.

Notice how Warner referred to the state’s largest tax increase not as a “tax increase” but as a reform of the tax code — a reform that just happened to yield an additional $1.4 billion in revenue for the biennial budget.

Warner’s justification for the tax increase is interesting. The tax hike is usually portrayed in the press as a prophylactic to ensure that Moody’s, the bond-rating agency, did not reduce Virginia’s coveted AAA bond rating. That argument has always been weak, because state revenues were rebounding ahead of projections at the very time that Gov. Warner was pushing through the tax hike. One could argue that Virginia was already in the clear.

The real reason for the tax hike is this (in the Governor’s words): “Our first-ever six year financial plan showed that we faced a structural imbalance well into the future.” Warner feared that revenue increases would be insufficient to meet Virginia’s long-term budget obligations.

But events have proved him wrong, and very few are willing to call him on it. Notice one word that never appeared in the Governor’s speech: “surplus.” He never once mentioned the recurring and growing budget surpluses — revenues consistently outstripping his six-year forecasts — that have taken place since 2004. The fact is, the growth in Virginia’s budget has been sufficiently robust to pay for all of Warner’s ongoing programs without a tax increase. This has been obscured by the fact that he has found clever ways to spend the surplus on one-shot programs such as university R&D, environmental clean-up and mental health reform.

The biggest failure of the Warner administration was taking that six-year budget forecast seriously enough to act upon it. Rather than waiting to see if events would bear him out, he argued for a pre-emptive tax increase. He got what he asked for, but events didn’t bear him out — his revenue forecasts were far too timid. No one in the General Assembly wants to make an issue of it because, after all, most everyone voted to go along; they share they blame. Besides, politicians are only too happy to spend the money.

Gov. Mark R. Warner gave his swan song to the General Assembly Wednesday, and he sounded the major themes that make it possible for him to leave office with a 70 percent approval rating. The secret to his success is simple: Refusing to allow himself to get sucked into America’s raging culture wars, he has focused steadfastly on core issues of state government. Whether you approve or disapprove of Warner’s record on taxes and spending, you have to give him credit for staying on message with both his rhetoric and his policy initiatives.

I believe together we found that place on the pendulum of public discourse — where most Virginians are. The place I call the Sensible Center. I believe we have been able to set aside some of the conflicts of the past . . . some of the divisiveness of the present . . . and some of the inertia which sometimes paralyzes our public debate. And for a sustained period of time, we have been able to make progress on problems we’d faced for many years.

You can quarrel with his execution if you’d like, as I have on occasion, but his overall vision –of solving problems, increasing government productivity, and creating economic opportunity, especially in Virginia’s hard-luck rural regions — is an undeniable winner.

Other elected officials, pay heed. That’s the winning formula.