Bacon's Rebellion

These gems were passed along by Joseph West to ponder as the General Assembly convenes.

“Anyone taken as an individual, is tolerably sensible and reasonable – as a member of a crowd, he at once becomes a blockhead.”

— Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805), leading German 18th-century dramatist, poet, and literary theorist and an intellectual contemporary of Hamilton and Madison.

“In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever character composed, passion never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason. … Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.”

— Alexander Hamilton and James Madison (Federalist No. 55, 15 February 1788)

This just in from Virginia Tech (4:47 p.m.):

Virginia Tech quarterback Marcus Vick has been permanently dismissed from the Hokie football program due to a cumulative effect of legal infractions and unsportsmanlike play. Virginia Tech had suspended Vick in 2003.

The university provided one last opportunity for Vick to become a citizen of the university and readmitted him in January 2004, with the proviso that any future problems would result in automatic dismissal from the team.

Bravo for Virginia Tech!

Let us hope that Marcus Vick is not a scape goat. Let us hope that this action represents the beginning of a new standard of sportsmanship that will be enforced across all Virginia colleges and for all sports — including those that don’t appear on national television.

Now, let’s see how long it takes for Vick to go pro.

After clearing out ineffective and inefficient boards and commissions in Virginia, Gov. Warner is creating new ones with noble and lofty purposes. The latest is the Motorcycle Advisory Council:

The group, comprised of state and local officials, state agency representatives, and motorcycle enthusiasts, will work to promote motorcycle safety, tourism, and business development in Virginia. The Council is the next step in Governor Warner’s “Motorcycle VIRGINIA!” initiative created in 2004.

“Virginia has worked to expand its tourism markets in so many areas – and motorcycle tourism is a great opportunity for us,” said Governor Warner. “As an example, the annual Gold Wing Road Riders Association state rally in Roanoke generates over $320,000 each year for the Roanoke Valley; and we know motorcyclists are generous with their time and resources in raising hundreds of thousands of dollars each year for charities in communities across the Commonwealth. Additionally, as the Commonwealth grapples with the transportation challenges of the next decade, motorcyclists need to have a voice in that debate.”

Until the creation of this council, I had not realized that bikers had no voice. I can only hope they will use it to tie transportation to land use planning and to lobby for changes in human settlement patterns.

It’s an impressive group of Virginians that Warner named to the council–many are affiliated with existing motorcycle groups or own their own machines. They’ll be able to ride their Harleys to meetings, weather permitting. I must admit disappointment that the list of state agencies represented did not include my own. I’ve had five or six calls over the last three years from individuals wanting to start chop shops or become motorcycle dealers/repair centers. Now I can refer them to the council and they should receive special business development assistance.

Thankfully, the Alcohol and Beverage Control Board is represented. We know intuitively that motorcyclists have special needs when it comes to alcohol.

In our column this week “The Devil’s Dance” at https://www.baconsrebellion.com/ we cautioned against expecting positive results vis a vis mobility and access (or anything else) from the 2006 legislative session. In a Wednesday, 4 January posting on this blog (“The Governor and Mobility”) we considered the Governor-Elect’s potential to improve mobility and access.

Right on cue, Governor-Elect Kaine named Mr. Homer as Secretary of Transportation. This assures citizens of the Commonwealth that traffic congestion will continue to grow and the long-term prospects for prosperity, security and sustainability will continue to erode.

This sort of a slap in the face happens to the good-government / community-responsibility / conservation organizations and their supporters after every election. They endorse the lesser-of-two-evils candidates. That candidate wins and then the newly elected office holder turns around and takes actions that support the Business-As-Usual / private-rights / consumption goals of the candidate that the voters turned down. It is clear that enough citizens who would not have voted or would have voted for Woody Woodpecker voted for Kaine because of his pledge to relate transportation to land use (aka, create functional human settlement patterns.)

Mr. Homer’s land use / transportation credentials are clear. He is best known for his cheerleading role for Disney’s American and Nissan Pavilion (nee, Cellar Door) in Prince William County. These are two of the greatest land use / transportation disasters to ever face the R=20 to R=35 Radius Band in the National Capital Subregion. He won one out of two and hundreds of thousands of citizens have been inconvenienced on many summer days since Nissan Pavilion open its gates.

In an interview with WAPO he cited two reasons why the detractors of his nomination (who had been supporters of Kaine) were wrong. Homer said that he had worked to raise money for shared-vehicle systems as well as roads. That completely misses the central point that roads or rails in the wrong location create dysfunctional human settlement patterns and cause long-term immobility. The clincher, however, is that Homer cited his work to support the badly defeated sales tax referendums. In tune with the the real world?

The best anyone has had to say about Homer is that he plays well with others, especially the groups responsible for the growing gridlock and that he understands the need to raise private money to build the wrong infrastructure in the wrong locations. We will address these two issues in future posts.

EMR

NBC-12 in Richmond has just reported that Richmond and Kansas City have been eliminated from consideration as potential sites for the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

Richmond’s team, with Josh Lief at the helm, gave it a good shot.

Update: The Friday morning Times-Dispatch story is here. No reason was given by NASCAR, but they claim they did the organizers a favor by not “stringing them along.”

Potomac ExecutiveBiz has published an interview with Aneesh, Chopra, Tim Kaine’s new choice for Secretary of Technology. (Registration may be necessary.) The 33-year-old Northern Virginian seems an unconventional choice.

On his professional background: “I am a managing director at a think tank with a focus for the health care industry. … A big portion of my professional background has been studying ways that technology can fundamentally transform the healthcare industry in particular.” (These and other quotes below in italics are all mine.)

On why he accepted the position: “I fundamentally shared Governor-Elect Kaine’s passion for his policy agenda. He stated some pretty big goals that I believe technology can play a pretty significant role in. The top among them for me is his desire to lower the uninsured rate in Virginia, lower health care costs, which will improve small businesses and access to health care, which will also hopefully do so in a way that is cost efficient across the government to use so we can actually make better use of the government dollar where appropriate. Those are the things that really drove me. His agenda resonated, and I thought that the technology piece would be a big factor in achieving those policy goals.”

His top priorities: “My first priority would be to nurture the continued success of VITA. Second priority is to work very closely with my colleagues in the Cabinet to identify the most leveraged areas where technology could improve government service. Third, I want to continue to support the technology industry across the Commonwealth.”

Reading between the lines: Chopra wants to apply technology to improving the efficiency and quality of health care — including, possibly, the state Medicaid program. If I’m right, that would prove to be a most interesting direction for the new Secretary of Technology to take the job.

Washington Post Metro columnist Marc Fisher now has a blog, Raw Fisher. He bills it “The Gold Plated Cadillac of the Internet.”

Pretty soon you’ll be nobody until somebody sees you blogging.

Update: Some VA bloggers welcomed Fisher and he noted that an article he wrote about blogging will appear soon on the American Journalism Review site.

I haven’t been outgoing Technology Secretary Eugene Huang’s biggest fan, but in this letter to the editor of the Daily Press, he shows a little “attitude.” He gets a good zinger in at the end, not that I think he has the better argument.

The City of Manassas has suspended its enforcement of the controversial zoning provision affecting extended families. There goes half of Bacon’s Rebellion‘s content ….

He could have ducked the questions, but Governor-elect Tim Kaine made his feelings known about the nationally televised unsportsmanlike conduct of Hokie Marcus Vick at Monday’s Gator Bowl. Good for him. I hope he’ll continue to speak out, even more strongly if necessary, against bad behavior of all kinds that brings dishonor to Virginia. A Governor ought to exert some moral authority when necessary.

Over at SST, die-hard Hokie fan Old Zach has his thoughts on Vick’s inexcusable stomp on the leg of a prone Lousiville player.

I’m with Old Zach. Vick should be dismissed from the team–for good, this time.

The Manassas Journal Messenger reported this afternoon that the ACLU is prepared to file a lawsuit challenging the local ordinance that redefines who counts as “family” when it comes to who can live together in a single family home.

According to the Messenger, Kent Willis, executive director of the ACLU, said in a press release issued today:

“No one is saying that Manassas can’t reasonably regulate the number of people living together for health and safety purposes,but the government has no right to tell me that my aunt or nephew can’t live under the same roof with me.”

Willis is reported to have gone on to criticize the ordinance as a violation of substantive due process rights and for its “purpose and effect” of breaking up Latino families.

As noted elsewhere in Bacon’s Web Empire, WAPO carried a front page story today on last night’s transport forum in West Falls Church. WAPO reports that there is little (no) consensus on “solutions.” Some who have the Governor-Elect’s ear have told us they understand that the only “solution” to improved mobility and access in contemporary New Urban Regions is Fundamental Change in human settlement patterns. These advisors and confidants have either not articulated this understanding well or the Governor-Elect has chosen to ignore and/or keep mum about this reality.

In the same story WAPO also reports that the town hall tour has attracted “hundreds of frustrated commuters.” Neither the MainStream Media nor the Governor-Elect has been willing to tell “commuters” that they need to go home and look in the mirror if they want to see the root cause of growing congestion. They have three choices, they can move their job, move their home or move both. Many are opting to jump out of the frying pan in one New Urban Region only to find themselves in the fire in another New Urban Region.

The “live here, work there” population (aka, commuters) cannot realistically expect any government action that will bail them out since it a physical impossibility to provide functional transport for dysfunctional settlement patterns. Dysfunctional human settlement patterns can be quantified by the Vehicle Miles Traveled per capita, per job and per household. See “The Commuting Problem,” 17 January 2005 at dev.baconsrebellion.com

WAPO as recently as 2 January 2006 editorially supported road building as a way to improve commuting. The growing economic pressure on MainStream Media makes it impossible for them to be honest with readers about the solutions to the growing mobility crisis because honesty would anger advertisers. Honesty would also anger subscribers because governance practitioners have not prepared citizens for understanding the Physics of Gridlock.

This raises the question: Can democracy, prosperity and sustainability be supported with the information derived from for-profit media? On the other hand, is volunteer media at the neighborhood, community, regional and nation-state scales the basis for the 21st century “Fourth Estate?” These are questions we will be exploring in future columns and through PROPERTY DYNAMICS.

EMR

There was some controversy in the comments section of an earlier post I wrote about the pay for Presidents/Acting President/Chancellor/Superintendent positions at state supported universities. These individuals receive a portion of their pay from state sources and a frequently larger portion from private sources. The Richmond Times-Dispatch provided this chart of pay and perks.

The T-D chart noted that “compensation packages vary widely and some are very complex.” The controversy was in the state funded portion of the pay–some saw certain university leaders (such as those from historically black or women’s colleges) receiving pay that was not comparable. I didn’t think there was that much variance that wasn’t explainable by obvious factors, such as a medical school, number of graduate programs, size of campus, enrollment or longevity.

The highest state pay goes to the Norfolk State University interim president–$216K. He receives no private money, however. The lowest pay goes to the president of Christopher Newport–$121K. The upper tier are presidents of VCU and UVA at $162K and VT at $155. In between, there are presidents in the $140s, $130s, and $120s. I don’t see all that much of a discrepancy, but I’m opening this up for any other comments that might be out there. If you want to make a pitch for more cash for the prez of your alma mater or less for a hated in-state rival, go for it.

Attorney Patrick O. Gottschalk has been named Secretary of Commerce and Trade by Governor-elect Tim Kaine. Gottschalk, a UVA Law grad and former naval officer, has a background in working economic development in his professional capacity, as well as experience with economic development groups, such as the Virginia Economic Developers Association.

Looks to be a solid appointment. Here’s his impressive bio.

More: He’s been a big Kaine supporter.

Look, I like the Beach Boys as much as the next guy, maybe more. I’d rank “Sloop John B.” among my top 20 favorite tunes of all times, and I’ve downloaded a bunch of other Beach Boy classics, from “Kokomo” to “Heroes and Villains,” onto my laptop. But is Virginia so sparse of home-grown musical talent that we need to import a headliner from the West Coast to fete Tim Kaine’s inauguration?

If I were elected Governor, here’s whom I would ask to play at my inauguration:

Susan Greenbaum, a Richmond musician. A half dozen cuts on her CD, “Hey, Hey, Hey,” are as good as — nay, better — than any of the popular music heard on the radio today. A former communications executive for Chesapeake Corp., she’s too old to fit the mold of the 20-something pop Diva, but she’s way more talented. Not only can she belt out a song, she writes her own music.

Carbon Leaf, a Richmond band, hasn’t made it into the Top 40 yet, but it is doing national tours. Every song on its latest album, “Indian Summer,” is solid, and some are inspired. Carbon Leaf’s music is not easily categorized, but it’s darn good.

And my absolute favorite, Scott Miller and the Commonwealth. Miller lives in Knoxville, TN, but he grew up in Virginia and the lyrics in his albums — “Downside” and “Thus Always to Tyrants” draw heavily upon Virginia themes. Plus, his music totally rocks. Great lyrics, great tunes, great range, great guitar.

Mr. Governor, why not use your inaugural gala to showcase some of the great musical talent that Virginia has to offer!