Bacon's Rebellion

Just as he’s putting the finishing touches on his ‘the-sky-is-falling’ campaign– based largely on opposition to last year’s tax increase–you remember, that one that was bi-partisan in nature and saved Virginia’s coveted Triple AAA bond rating–the Virginia Employment Commission up and announces Friday that the Commonwealth gained 50,300 jobs during the last year, shattering the previous 12-month record growth by 26,800. Wish as hard as he might that Virginia suffers under commonsense, centrist government, Kilgore must face the fact that it does not. What’s a guy to do? A thought: he’d be a lock for the role of ‘Chicken Little,’ opening at Republican playhouses everywhere come November. I doubt if he’d even have to audition.

The Martinsville Bulletin has several reports on candidate and officeholder appearances at the Peach Festival in Stuart over the weekend. (No word on whether Barnie did any “belly-bumping.”)

It appears that everyone is in favor of a new college in Southside, although they don’t want to be pinned down on the exact location or the funding.

Rep. Rick Boucher (D-9th): “I’m strongly for that (a college in Southside.) I’m hopeful that the state will move forward … once that happens we can work on getting federal funding (for the college).”

Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine: “I am not walking out of office without a four-year university started in Southside.”

Jerry Kilgore: “I have been committed to a four-year college in Southside from the beginning.”

Sen. Bill Bolling: “I support it. I think it’s a great idea.”

Sen. Russ Potts: “Those politicians may tell you they’ll get $500 million for a new college but that’s not reality.” Building a college “step by step” is the way it should be done, he said.

I hope someone will ask the candidates about a university in Southside at the debate in Northern Virginia.

I also hope someone will ask Russ Potts who “those politicians” are and what figure is “reality.” Potts always seems to have plenty to say about everyone else’s position, but not so much about his own.

Based on media reports, Jim has his impression of the Jerry Kilgore and Russ Potts appearance before the Virginia Association of Counties meeting yesterday.

What I noticed in the coverage was the total lack of any specifics from third party candidate Russ Potts. Apparently, when you’re “heaping scorn” on the Republican candidate, you get a standing ovation for platitudes like “no free lunch” and “put every revenue stream on the table.” Kilgore’s specific proposals are detailed and dismissed; Potts’ criticism is hailed as “refreshing.”

Add county officials to the editorial boards as Russ Potts’ constituency. They both savor the idea of increased taxes–they don’t need to know anything more. I could be wrong, but I think voters will want to know how much their taxes will go up and where that revenue will go.

Tyler Whitley’s Richmond Times-Dispatch story is here; the Roanoke Times story by Michael Sluss is here; Kate Andrews’ coverage in the Daily Progress is here. Were 50 people in the audience–or 150? That’s one discrepancy in the coverage.

It will be interesting to see reports tomorrow on Tim Kaine’s appearance before VACO today.

Russ Potts received a standing ovation at a Virginia Association of Counties gathering in Charlottesville Sunday for a speech in which he stated his willingness to raise taxes and denounced Jerry Kilgore, as a “coward.” Kilgore, by contrast, drew a “tepid” response when he appeared earlier in the day and defended his proposal to cap real estate assessment increases at five percent, according to a story filed by Virginian-Pilot writer Warren Fiske.

For the first time in this campaign, I actually agree with Potts: State government should not meddle with local taxes. Enough is enough, the independent candidate for governor said. The flexibility of local governments has been crippled already by the General Assembly’s efforts to reduce car taxes. “Let me see a show of hands for how many people think the commonwealth of Virginia should have anything to do with the way local governments assess real estate taxes,” Potts asked. Of the 50 local officials in attendance, not one raised a hand.

There’s a fundamental principle at stake: The state should address those issues, including taxes, over which it has direct authority and for which it is accountable, and leave local matters to local elected officials.

Assuming the Pilot’s account was a fair and balanced capsulization of what transpired (not something that I take for granted), the Republican contender turned in a weak performance. Kilgore argued that a limit on assessment increases is needed to protect homeowners from the escalating tax bills that accompany soaring home values. “I know my plan is not popular in this room, but I also know it’s something we must do for the taxpayers of Virginia,” Kilgore said lamely. “I ask today that you not judge me on one proposal.”

What Kilgore should have done: He should have challenged local government officials to combat higher taxes by more aggressively cutting expenses. Local governments, like the state, should be continually re-engineering administrative processes and using IT to bolster employee productivity. Even more fundamentally, counties need to rethink their zoning codes and comprehensive plans that perpetuate scattered, disconnected, low-density development patterns that make it impossible to efficiently provide an urban level of municipal services. Unfortunately, Kilgore has never indicated that he has much of a grasp either of re-engineering or land use reform, so it’s not likely that we’ll ever hear such a message from him.

In fairness Potts seems totally unacquainted with those concepts, too. His solution to every problem is simply to raise taxes. But he’s right about keeping accountability where it belongs.

This past Wednesday I drove 500+ miles to Upstate New York. Today I returned.

The only significant delays I encountered in either direction were on I-95 in Northern Virginia. Where was Russ Potts when I needed him?

Looks like I’ve got a good bit of blogosphere catching up to do; I better unpack and get started.

By opposing public spending on behalf of illegal immigrants, Jerry Kilgore “appeared to engage” in the demonization of Hispanics. That’s the inexplicable logic of Richmond Times-Dispatch political writer Jeff Schapiro in his column in today’s paper.

Schapiro takes on Jerry Kilgore for criticizing a decision by the town of Herndon, in Fairfax County, to finance gathering spots for day laborers, many of whom are Spanish-speaking illegal immigrants from Central America. The laborers have been converging at a convenience store to scout for construction, landscaping and janitorial jobs, creating something of a public nuisance.

Although he quotes Kilgore’s “handlers” as saying that government services should be available only to people who reside legally in the country, Schapiro describes that argument as “a coded appeal to voters.” Kilgore is sending signals “rooted in ostracism rather than assimilation” that please conservative voters. “Kilgore’s unspoken message is nativist, spiced with resentment and fear: It is us against them.”

Perhaps that’s all true. I’m not privy to the inside thinking of the Kilgore campaign, so I can’t say for a fact that his handlers aren’t racists and bigots. But Schapiro offers absolutely no evidence other than his own authority that they are the Machiavellians he claims them to be. What I can say is this: Many people, like me, have a problem with illegal immigrants — not because we’re prejudiced against Central Americans but because they’re here illegally! You see, some people have this funny thing about obeying the law. Obeying the law is not just something Americans should do. It’s something that everyone should do.

There may be pragmatic reasons for Herndon’s proposal. (Will Vehrs discusses some of them here.) But to describe Kilgore’s position than anything other that what it is — that government should not provide services to illegals — is to engage in reverse race baiting.

Schapiro and others “appear” to characterize conservative Republicans as racists and bigots with the goal of turning law-abiding voters in the Hispanic community against them. Unlike Schapiro, I have concrete evidence to back up my assertion: Schapiro’s own words. Noting the divide between Kilgore Republicans and President Bush, who supports limited amnesty for illegals, Schapiro notes: “Perhaps Kaine and Warner can use this latest Republic fissure to mobilize the Hispanic vote for November.”

Remember the list of 10 urban issues presented by yours truly, on behalf of Mayor Wilder, to all three of the gubernatorial candidates last week? They have created a lot of discussion. So tomorrow, at 10AM, August 15th, at Richmond City Hall, the campaign manager for Russ Potts is going to meet with the Mayor’s policy advisor to discuss them.

Translation: The Potts Plot thickens!

Diallo Dphrepaulezz is an African-American of Haitian descent, a graduate of Petersburg public schools and Virginia State University, an executive with the Edison Schools, an “education reform” consultant, and a critic of public schools. He’s also running as an independent against Rosalyn Dance, a Democrat and former mayor of Petersburg, who is now considered a shoe-in in the race for the 63rd House of Delegates district.

South of the James, a new blog, has a fascinating profile of Dphrepaulezz, an intense but mysterious young man who could either crash and burn in a very public way, or could stun the local political establishment. Either way, the 63rd district is definitely a race to watch.

It was only a matter of time before Bill Bolling, Republican nominee for Lieutenant Governor, began attacking his Democratic adversary Leslie Byrne for her “liberal extremism.” My only question: What took him so long?

Bolling is running a sound clip on his website from an Aug. 8 meeting between Byrne and the United Mine Workers of America in Castlewood. Someone posed the question: “If you had a chance to do away with the right to work law through legislation would you vote for it?”

Byrne replied: “Absolutely. I call it the right to be poor law.”

For decades, it was political suicide in Virginia to oppose the Right to Work law, which allows employees in a unionized workforce the right to opt out of joining the union. Given the steady erosion of manufacturing employment in Virginia, however, the issue doesn’t resonate like it used to. Labor unions are increasingly irrelevant in Virginia’s service-based knowledge economy. Right to Work still may matter to the few remaining labor unions in Virginia and their die-hard liberal allies like Byrne, but most people see unions as a hindrance to flattening hierarchies, on pushing decision making down to the guys on the factory floor, and dissolving distinctions between “management” and “labor.”

The question is, will Bolling’s attack mean anything to anyone either? Or is the obsession with Right to Work, on both sides of the issue, an artifact of Virginia’s industrial past?

With not much press fanfare, a Republican Congressional debate has come full circle and is being made to sound like the right friends in right places, or perhaps it’s a case of friend’s rights, or what’s left of the mail-ordered leftovers?

“COME ON DOWN!” Mr. Charles Abell … you’re the next appointment director on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Apparently, the Price is Right with DC politics.

The Blue Dog’s conservative friends should demand to hear who barks the loudest about ‘Congressional Nearsightedness’ — including those lame post-911 security background checks concerning the new majority staff director of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Which should be required especially after finding out our ‘sleeping-at-the-spinning wheel’ Senator is busy closing bases in Virginia. ‘Ooh, say can’t you see’ the unemployment lines around DC — and Hampton Roads and Norfolk?

Senator John Warner has gone spinning around and around, where he stops … Nobody knows?

~ the blue dog

What a day! WaPo has six stories on the front page and five of them relate to human settlement patterns and/or to the topic of our current column on Jared Diamonds new book Collapse.

There was some interest noted in one of them (“The Los Angeles Story” about “density”) in the string following Jim Bacons post on the need for a Carbon Tax from yesterday. As we document in “The Shape of the Future,” almost every discussion of economic, social or physical consequence eventually gets to the issue of human settlement pattern.

The Los Angeles story demonstrates the wisdom of the adage “It is not how dense you make it, it is how you make it dense.”

Proximity is a fundamental parameter in the creation of functional urban form. Close proximity of a wide range of elements is a necessary, but not sufficient, parameter for sustainable human settlement patterns. In addition, there must be, among other things, functional dooryards, clusters and neighborhoods that are organized in relatively balanced villages and those villages configured in Balanced Communities that are arranged in such a way to create sustainable New Urban Regions and Urban Support Regions. There is a lot to learn from a careful reading of the story with the right contextual framework into which to fit the information.

Mobility is an example. Attempts to provide a “modern” alternative to the extensive system of “interurban” streetcars in The Los Angeles region just before, during and after WWII was founded on the tragically flawed idea that it is possible to build enough “freeways” so everyone could go wherever they wanted to go when ever they wanted to go there in private automobiles. (Some will recognize this as a variant of the Private Vehicle Mobility Myth. See “The Myths That Blind Us” 20 Oct 2003 and “Myth to Law” 29 Nov 2004 at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com

A unique combination of significant topographic constraints, early reliance on an extensive shared vehicle system, small municipalities with strong zoning powers, a region-wide lack of water and large manufacturing, fabricating and entertainment venues, among others, resulted in a relatively high density at the village and community scale and a large number of expensive houses in dangerous locations. See “Fire and Flood.” 3 Nov 2003 at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com

Over the past 20 years the region has slowly and painfully started to reintroduce shared vehicle alternatives for mobility. That accounts for the improvements in some measures of mobility and access that Jim noted. It is also true that, in line with the perspective of Tony Downs, congestion has forced changes in location decisions.

Actually the Los Angeles New Urban Region would work fairly well if citizens understood the importance of Balanced Communities and made more of their decisions based on an intelligent consideration of the real alternatives unvarnished by pandering politicians and philosophical nut cases. They would come to realize this in a hurry if the government subsidies were phased out and citizens and enterprises all paid the full cost of their location decisions. Many of the best “mixed use” and “new urbanist” projects in the Untied States can be found there along with some of the most successful Planned New Communities.

The WaPo version of “The LA Story” has special meaning to me because my grandfather, a builder and developer in California at the turn of the last century, gave up an option on most of Signal Hill just before oil was discovered in order to buy property in Richmond and Gridley. Readers will recognize these two places as California real estate hot spots.

Post Script: The contention that there is no evidence to tie mobility and access directly to human settlement pattern is so silly that is does not merit a response. This relationship is not clearly evident only to those who have a specific economic, social or physical objective that is rendered uneconomic, anti-social or physically impossible but admitting the existence of the relationship.

EMR

“In a perfect world, we could design it to everyone’s satisfaction,” Connolly said. “But we don’t live in that world.” –Chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, Gerry Connolly

Connolly’s quote was in response to the reported costs of the Tysons rail plan having been trimmed by 25% (see Wash. Post). As now proposed the subway will run on aerial tracks for three miles rising to as high as 45 feet through Tysons Corner. The supports for the elevated tracks are placed roughly every 100 feet and have been downgraded to simpler more commonly used piers, instead of the ones originally conceived that had “an architectural identity.”

So Connolly and the supporters of this boondoggle of a project are all elated that the estimated cost have been trimmed down from $2.4 billion to $1.8 billion–still some $300 million higher than the project’s original $1.5 billion budgeted price tag. They are confident that the additional funding required to complete the project won’t be hard to come by.

In Connolly’s imperfect world, this new price tag is as solid as a bowl of jello. Projects of this magnitude are usually plagued with significant cost overruns.

But Connolly is right about the fact that we do not live in a perfect world. You see in a perfect world sleazy politicians like Connolly who are on the payroll of developers would not be holding public office! (See “Who’s Watching Fairfax County’s Watchdogs?,” “Bad Company,” and “The Rail-to-Dulles Scam“.)

Fellow bloggers, Bacon’s Rebellion is rolling out a new feature — an adapation of the “social network” concept to the political sphere. The “Bacon’s Rebellion Political Network” is ready for testing, but not yet ready for prime time. I’m introducing it on this blog first in the hope that you bloggers, being the political junkies you are, can help me refine it — identifying quirks, problems and ideas for improvement — before I introduce it to the broader public.

The core of the “Political Network” is a database of personal profiles. Join the network, create a profile, and then invite your friends, colleagues and associates in the political arena to join the network, too, and then link their profiles to yours.

Why do this? If we can get a critical mass of people to list their political affiliations, hot-button issues, and areas of political and professional expertise, we can create a searchable database that allows you identify people with the skills, partisan affiliations and background you’re looking for — and for others to locate you. Furthermore, the database tracks up to four degrees of separation, so you can see not only “who’s who,” but “who knows who” in Virginia politics.

As a bonus, the Political Network provides cool features, like blog-like personal journals, which are automatically set up with your account, and message boards, and public bookmarks where you can alert your contacts to timely content on the Web. The Political Network also allows you to create “groups” that restrict certain types of communications (such as journals or message boards) to members of that group. If you belong to a particular citizens group or political campaign, say, you can map out your group’s network of contacts, and you can use the tools to communicate internally.

I’m still figuring out how the system works, so I may not be able to answer all questions. But if you have any questions, suggestions or comments, shoot them to me at [email protected].

The Fredericksburg Free-Lance Star offers a worthy quote of the week:

On discovering the acquisition of two trolleys (total price $320,000) instead of two buses ($120,000) would actually cost the Town of Culpeper $3,000 less because support would come from a different federal pot, Councilman Mike Olinger quipped, “If the federal government is going to waste [the money], I want them to waste it in our county.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled Wednesday that Virginia’s requirement that students recite the Pledge of Allegiance everyday in the classroom is constitutional. As reported in The Daily Press, “Virginia Attorney General Judith W. Jagdmann issued a press release Wednesday stating that the 4th Circuit ruled the pledge is not a religious exercise, “but a patriotic one,” and therefore does not violate the establishment clause.

Edward R. Myers, a 46-year-old, Mennonite software engineer from Northern Virginia, had filed the suit, objecting to schools “yoking patriotism and religion” by promoting what he described as a “God and Country civil religion.”

Fourth Circuit Appeals Court Judge Karen Williams wrote: “Undoubtedly, the pledge contains a religious phrase, and it is demeaning to persons of any faith to assert that the words `under God’ contain no religious significance. The inclusion of those two words, however, does not alter the nature of the pledge as a patriotic activity.”

I’m sorry, but I just don’t see how people get so exercised over this. If members of the mainstream culture want to recit the Pledge of Allegiance at school, with “under God” in the prayer, let them. If atheists want to skip over “under God” during the recital, let them. If Hate-America-Firsters want to skip over “with liberty and justice for all,” or sit out the entire recital, let them. Why it’s necessary to file lawsuits, with the consequence that judges issue rulings with “winners” and “losers,” is beyond me. There’s got to be a way where everyone’s point of view can be tolerated.