Bacon's Rebellion

The latest edition of the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine has been posted online. You can view it here.

Barnie Day debated Norm Leahy yesterday about the Russ Potts phenomenon over at One Man’s Trash. I jumped in, too, and today’s Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine has Barnie’s column that started it all and my commentary on it in “Virginia Pundit Watch.”

Comments are welcome here, too, on any or all of the issues: Does Russ Potts represent the center in Virginia politics? Is he a serious candidate? Is he getting a free ride in the media? Are polls showing scant support for him misleading? Most of all, can he win?

I’ve always been fascinated by the psychology and sociology of “slugging,” the practice of strangers forming ad hoc car pools on I-95 in Northern Virginia so drivers can utilize HOV lanes.

“Slugs” are worried about a new idea: allowing drivers to pay a toll to ride in HOV lanes. They fear it will end slugging. Rather than pick up a slug, drivers will just pay the toll. Slugs will be forced into their own cars, adding to the congestion. The Washington Post has the story.

Every transportation idea has its potential downside. For more learned commentary, see The Road to Ruin.

To all of our readers and my colleagues who are fathers, and to their fathers, I wish a Happy Father’s Day on this last day of spring.

My Dad worked very hard to provide for us and there weren’t a lot of extras until I was well into high school, but Dad believed passionately in being informed. He always asked his mother-in-law, my grandmother, to give him a Newsweek subscription for Christmas every year, and he always made sure we got home delivery of the Washington Post and Manassas Journal Messenger. With not a lot of diversions back in those simpler times, his choices led to the love of reading about current events becoming ingrained in me at a young age.

As I got older and started a family of my own, travelling to dinner at Dad’s on Saturday nights became a ritual. We would all sit in the living room and watch “Inside Washington” and the “McLaughlin Group.” My father would rail against the views of “that liberal, Carl Rowan” and my affinty for pundits and political discussion was cemented.

I miss him.

The Kilgore crew is finally talking tough on taxes. Citing this year’s Incredible Expanding Budget Surplus, now running 15.2 percent ahead of last year and 4.9 percent ahead of forecast, the Kilgore campaign criticized the 2004 tax increase, arguing that economic growth would have provided the state the money it needed for expanded services. Reported The Washington Post Friday:

“Jerry Kilgore was out front saying the economic growth that Virginia was experiencing would lead to greater revenue. The numbers we see certainly bear that out,” said Kilgore spokesman J. Tucker Martin. “Jerry Kilgore fully believes that the way you grow an economy is by letting people keep more of their hard-earned money. You don’t grow an economy by taking money from people’s wallets and putting it into state coffers.”

I don’t recall Kilgore being particularly “out front” in the fight against the tax increase a year and a half ago. But if he’s claiming he was, I’m happy to hear it. Let him pick up the low-tax banner. Meanwhile, Tim Kaine, who backed last year’s tax increase, finds himself on the defensive.

“If Jerry Kilgore has his way, we’d still be operating under deficit spending, we’d never have gotten our fiscal house back in order and we’d be struggling to fully fund” education, said Kaine’s director of communications, Mo Elleithee. “I’m not sure I want to take a lecture from Jerry Kilgore on fiscal responsibility.”

Mo, you’re dreaming. How big a surplus does it take for you to recognize that the tax increase was not necessary?

So, what is the spin coming out of the Warner administration these days? “I know there’s going to be a lot of second-guessing,” Secretary of Finance John Bennett said in a presentation to the Senate Finance Committee. “That just goes with the territory.”

Second guessing? Nice try. How about, “I told you so.” How about, “We predicted it, and you ignored us!” Some of us have argued all along that the tax increases were unnecessary, that expanded programs could be funded through economic growth, and that if revenue is at some point in the future inadequate, you raise taxes then, when you’re staring a deficit in the face, not now, based on the fear that deficits might occur one day. C’mon, suck it up and admit it. You blew it! Raising taxes was the biggest mistake of the Warner administration, and it’s going to come back to haunt you.

Gov. Mark Warner was interviewed this morning on NPR about Medicaid. As Chairman of the National Governors Association, he is the leading spokesperson for the states on this troubling issue.

Virginia has seen Medicaid spending go from $1 billion to $5 billion over the last 15 years. Warner identified three factors contributing to the rise: the Federal government push costs to the states, fewer employers offering insurance (in effect urging employees to go on Medicaid), and the “disinvestment” of senior citizen assets, making them eligible for Medicare funded long-term care because they are suddenly “poor.” As Medicaid spending surpasses education spending in states, Warner says a “grandma vs. grandkids” confrontation is being created.

The Governor sounded confident and in command of the issue. He deftly sidestepped a late question asking if the Medicare issue might make someone want to be president.

I’m not the only one to be fixated on the ever-growing state surplus, which the Associated Press now pegs at $1 billion this year. (I presume that’s over and above the surplus talked about in January, which the General Assembly largely funneled into road projects, though I’m not sure.) Arlingtonian Tim Wise over at the Growls blog quotes The Washington Post and Richmond Times-Dispatch:

According to the Post, the Secretary of Finance “told the Senate Finance Committee that tax collections have increased by 15.2% over the first 11 months of the last fiscal year . . . well ahead of the official forecast of 10.3% growth for fiscal 2005, which ends in two weeks. Revenue grew at an even higher rate in May, increasing by 23% over last year.” The AP story in today’s Newport News Daily Press points out, “Even without last year’s $1.4 billion tax increase, revenue would have been up 19.2% last month.” The bottom line, as usual, seems to be provided in a Richmond Times-Dispatch editorial: either Governor Warner’s fiscal analysts “are woefully off base in their revenue projections . . . or Warner and his staff continue lowballing estimates in order to increase support for the Governor’s political agenda.”

Everyone has their own idea of what to do with that money. My personal favorite is to give it back to the taxpayers. One place to start looking for ideas might be the Freedom & Prosperity Agenda unveiled by a coalition of Virginia conservaties in April. Just to get the conversation started, here are some of that group’s ideas:

• Eliminate the War of 1812 tax (BPOL)
• Pass a Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR)
• Eliminate the Death tax
• Eliminate the prepayment of the Sales and Use tax
• Constitutional Amendment to base real estate taxes on the acquisition value of the property
• Proposals for new taxes must contain sunset provisions
• Eliminate the car tax

For details on the Freedom & Prosperity Agenda, click here.

Not Larry Sabato runs the Virginia House of Delegates 2005 Elections blog and he is the toast of the Commonwealth after a perfect record of predicting Tuesday’s elections (although Not Mark Rozell begs to differ).

Not content to rest on his laurels, Not Larry has announced a Friday “Celebrity Blogging” feature that debuts June 23d. Sen. Ken Cuccinelli, R-Fairfax, and David Englin, Democratic Delegate-elect from Arlington, will each discuss one candidate or issue each week.

Virginia Pundit Watch will be watching!

Virginia Tech is sponsoring an early childhood conference in Charlottesville with a focus on “development through inclusion – regardless of physical or mental ability.”

Workshops will examine “cultural differences and disabilities in children in order to provide collaborative, instructional strategies and curriculums designed to meet the needs of all children.” Speaker Mara Shapon-Shevin will expound upon the idea of applying “the practice of inclusion” to all classrooms “in order to eradicate inclusion’s general association with special needs children.” Blah, blah, woof, woof, eyes glaze over.

Is it just me, or does this sound like a touchie-feelie fest? Does anyone really think that more “inclusion” will help special needs students? Am I overlooking something when I observe that “special needs” students have special needs — that they need specialized exercises and programs tailored to their level of cognitive development? In some instances, I would guess, children could be mainstreamed with their peers and given special instruction for an hour or two per day. But certainly not all. Am I sounding cold and callous by suggesting that “inclusion” of inappropriate children in mainstream classes will result in the dumbing down of the curriculum for students who are not disabled?

Disabled children certainly deserve our compassion, but is “inclusion” truly the best way to help them? I don’t know the answers. I’m just asking questions.

The editorial board of the Washington Post has responded to Tuesday’s Virginia primary:

The results set the stage for what should be a sharp debate over the critical questions facing the state: first and foremost, fiscal policy and how to improve Virginia’s badly inadequate transportation system.

Both major party tickets fall short on answering these “critical questions,” according to the editorial, but amazingly the Post doesn’t see what several Virginia papers have seen–the Russ Potts solution.

With that easy answer not on the table, the Post offers this prescription:

Virginia needs a serious dialogue about how to raise the tens of billions of dollars needed for transportation over the next decade or two.

That’s the ticket–serious dialogue, not the whimsical dialogues we’ve been having all these years. This transportation problem is only now getting bad!

I’m starting to believe that it’s the editorial boards, not the candidates, who are avoiding the serious dialogue and tough choices. It’s easy for an editor in an air conditioned office to proclaim that transportation needs tens of billions more dollars. It’s a lot tougher for a candidate to choose Coalfields Expressway over Route 29 bypass, or rail to Dulles over widening Rt. 66 in Arlington, or the hundred other choices presented as they campaign across the state. It’s easy to call for spending money to repair bridges deemed inadequate by a national study; it’s harder to face voters stuck in traffic jams for months while the work is performed, and then longer when inevitably the project goes over budget or additional problems are discovered.

Never let it be said that I am hostile to the Virginia Information Technologies Agency because former Secretary of Technology George Newstrom swore that it would generate $100 million a year in savings and we haven’t come close to achieving that goal — a goal that everyone is doing the best they can to shove down the memory hole.

VITA is doing some useful things. (Believe it or not, I’m not being facetious here). It is putting a lot of forms online, making government more accessible to the public. The latest two examples:

Department of Charitable Gaming launches online bingo registration service. Find out more.

Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services launches new online animal record reporting system. Find out more.

Never let it be said that I’m unwilling to ignore evidence that contradicts my pet theories, in this case my argument that speculation is driving much of the increase in Northern Virginia property values. Today’s Clarke Times-Courier quotes George Mason University regional economist Stephen Fuller to the effect that super-heated job creation in Northern Virginia accounts for the spectacular rise in real estate prices. Sayeth the Times-Courier:

Job growth is running so much stronger than last year,” Fuller said. “We are so strong it’s almost embarrassing.” The [Washington] region added a whopping 287,000 new jobs between 1999 and 2004, according to the GMU Trends Report. And that trend is continuing. Between April 2004 and April 2005, an additional 84,400 jobs were created–53,900 of them in Northern Virginia.

“There were seven times as many new jobs created in Northern Virginia as suburban Maryland,” Fuller said. “We are fat,” he added. “We are better than any market in the United States. “In fact, the Northern Virginia economy has outperformed every other metropolitan region in the country over the past five to six years, the report says. And it seems it is just going to get better.”

Last year was the best since 2000,” Fuller said, “and this year is going to be better than last year.”

Yesterday’s Richmond Times-Dispatch published the seemingly alarming news (“Virginia is for Dumpers“) that shipments of trash from other states to Virginia increased 18 percent in 2004, reaching 7.8 million tons. That includes everything from household trash and construction debris to medical waste and treated human waste. Virginia now retains the dubious distinction of being the No. 2 trash importer, behind Pennsylvania, in the country.

I know this really upsets my friends in the environmental community, but I just don’t get it. Trash has to go somewhere, doesn’t it? What difference does it make if it winds up in a landfill in New York or Virginia? It’s not as if we Virginians have to smell the stuff. We wouldn’t even know it was there if the T-D didn’t tell us!

I have a laissez-faire attitude towards the shipping and disposal of trash as long as–and this is an important qualification–it’s dumped in properly regulated landfills that protect the groundwater from leachate and the neighbors from nasty odors. As best as I can tell, Virginia’s massive, industrial-sized landfills have done a great job. If they didn’t, we would have heard about it.

Actually, I regard the trash disposal business as a good thing. I marvel that New Yorkers and other out-of-staters are actually paying us cash money to take their garbage. The big landfills are located in poor, out-of-the-way jurisdictions like Charles City and Amelia, and pay the localities handsomely for the privilege. The greater the volume of trash, the higher the payments to these localities, allowing them to support higher levels of services–especially funding for schools–than they otherwise could afford. If New Yorkers want to subsidize the education of Virginia children because no one wants landfills in the Empire State, that’s fine with me.

If first you don’t succeed…

Well, I’m going to try to stir the pot for a second time.

The Washington Post reported, Bill Bolling said, “I look forward to competing against my opponent, Ms. Byrne,’ Bolling said in his usual conversational style. ‘And I want to encourage her to invite the candidate for president that she championed in 2004, Howard Dean, to Virginia, to campaign by her side. We hope she does that.”

When Leslie Byrne co-chair the 2004 Howard Dean for President campaign in Virginia, she wrote a Washington Post letter-to-the-editor stating her objections to the war in Iraq:

http://fordean.org/aa/issues/press_view.asp?ID=2334

Is Leslie Byrne an asset, or a liability for Gubernatorial candidate Tim Kaine and Attorney General candidate Creigh Deeds?

~the blue dog

Yo! Phil! You got to surface sooner or later. Come out! Come out! Give us the spin! Shall we set loose the nosy hounds?