Bacon's Rebellion

Michael Graham on WMAL (AM630 — the ABC affiliate in the Washington, DC area whose signal reaches all of Nortern Virginia) is carrying on a RINO Hunt. He’s targeting three NOVA legislators, namely, Gary Reese, Joe May, and Harry Parrish. Apparently, he plans on carrying this theme through June 14!

Graham interviewed Reese, May, and Parrish on Tuesday, May 31, 2005. He also followed up with an interview of yours truly, on the following day. The audio clips of all four interviews can be heard on the VA Club for Growth website.

Graham had an online poll on his website last Friday. The question asked was: “RINO Hunt – Divisive or About Time”. 83% of the respondents answered “Yes, it’s about time!” (See below.) Obviously, this is not a statistically valid poll and it doesn’t even say how many people voted. Nonetheless, it shows a trend, which is also validated by the many callers into Graham’s show–the majority of the callers are speaking out against the RINOs.

Bacon’s Rebellion is launching a new blog, “The Road to Ruin,” which will focus on transportation and land use issues. The blog is a key component of a broader initiative to provide deeper, more insightful coverage of the transportation policy debate.

Thanks to the generous financial support of our donors, led by the Piedmont Environmental Council, Bacon’s Rebellion has hired a full-time staff writer to research and write about transportation issues through the 2006 session of the General Assembly. (Read more about the initiative here.) Bob Burke, a former writer for the Fredericksburg Free-Lance Star and senior editor of Virginia Business magazine, will tackle the transportation topics that the Mainstream Media has consistently ignored. Bacon’s Rebellion will disseminate his stories electronically.

Burke has extensive experience writing about the environment, transportation, land use and economic development. As part of his daily routine, he will round up transportation-related news in Virginia publications and link to the articles from the new blog. Also, I will shift my transportation-related blog posts to “The Road to Ruin.” I invite readers of this blog interested in comprehensive and in-depth coverage of transportation/land use issues to frequent www.virginiatransportation.blogspot.com.

A month ago, I promised Bacon’s Rebellion bloggers that great things were coming. While Virginia has a number of excellent blogs, none have had the resources to create much in the way of original content. For the most part, we have been limited to putting our own spin on news reported by the Mainstream Media. By hiring Burke, Bacon’s Rebellion breaks the mold. We will provide a depth of coverage that will put the Mainstream Media to shame. Yes, that’s a challenge. And a promise.

In his new book, “Going Broke by Degree: Why College Costs Too Much,” Richard Vedder contests a key justification for public investment in higher education: the argument that higher ed spending contributes to the general prosperity. A brief version of Vedder’s argument appears in the current edition of Forbes magazine (requires registration). I haven’t decided if I agree with his arguments or not, but he raises excellent points that should be considered in the context of public funding for Virginia universities.

Vedder, a professor of economics at Ohio State University, compared the 10 states with the highest state funding for universities to the 10 states with the lowest between 1977 and 2000, and found that the low-spending states enjoyed a 46 percent growth in real income per capita while the high-spending states racked up only 32 percent growth. How could this be? Vedder raises a couple of possibilities.

Colleges have devoted relatively little new funding over the past generation to the core mission of instruction (spending only 21 cents of each new inflation-adjusted dollar per student on it), preferring instead to assist research, hire more nonacademic staff, give generous pay increases, support athletics and build luxurious facilities. … In 1976 American education employed three nonfaculty professional workers (administrators, counselors, librarians, computer experts) for every 100 students; by 2001 that number had doubled.

Vedder also notes that educated people are mobile. Many of them leave the high-tax states where they were educated. Where to? To low tax states that don’t invest nearly as much in higher education! “Taxes reduce private-sector activity,” he says. “People who must pay high taxes tend to work and invest less and also tend to migrate to lower-tax areas.”

This comes from “Clean Virginia Waterways,” a Longwood University organization dedicated to the cleanliness and quality of Virginia’s waterways, and organizer of the International Coastal Cleanup here in Virginia: In last year’s clean-up, nearly 4,000 volunteers picked up more than 176,000 pounds of litter, including these top 10 items:

1. Plastic beverage bottles, two liters or less
2. Glass beverage bottles
3. Food wrappers/containers
4. Cigarettes/ Cigarette filters
5. Beverage cans
6. Bags
7. Caps, Lids
8. Cups, Plates, Forks, Knives, Spoons
9. Straws / Stirrers
10. Balloons

Dis-gus-ting!

I’ve had it with all this talk about “saving the family farm!” What’s so special about the family farm? Nobody gives a rip about the disappearance of the “mom and pop” store. I don’t hear anyone singing the praises of the “family blog.” So, why do we have this sentimental attachment to the family farm?

The latest pabulum comes from Tim Kaine, as quoted by Chris Graham in the August Free Press: “What I want to do as governor is to organize my agriculture policy around a simple principle, and that’s to do what we can to save family farms. I started to really focus on this as a main goal, more than increasing output or increasing percentages or the tonnages of soybeans or other products. I want to focus on saving family farms.”

Here’s the reality of farming in Virginia. Outside of a few niche products, farming is not profitable! It requires long hours of hard work, and the return on investment is lousy. Virginia simply lacks the competitive advantages that farming has in other states, particularly the Midwestern breadbasket. Most Virginia farmers still working today fall into one of two categories: (1) Old guys who’ve been farming all their lives, and (2) affluent farmers who raise grapes, horses and cattle as part of their patrician lifestyle.

If farmers’ children don’t care about saving the farm, I don’t see why state government should. As far as the patrician farmers, god bless ’em. They maintain beautifully manicured estates that the rest of us can gaze upon as we drive through the country. But I don’t buy the argument that semi-retired financiers from New York are worthy of state support.

A “top Democratic source” has informed the Washington Post that the Democratic Party of Virginia will announce as early as Monday that former House majority leader C. Richard Cranwell will replace Kerry J. Donley as chairman.

According to the source, who did not want to be named because some key people still were being informed of the change, Donley asked to step down because of a job he is taking. The source said Gov. Mark R. Warner (D) and gubernatorial candidate Timothy M. Kaine support Cranwell as his replacement. Cranwell, a sharp-tongued lawmaker who was considered the party’s top legislative strategist, is popular in Roanoke and other parts of rural southwest Virginia.

Donley has been a predictable, somewhat bland, mouthpiece for the Democratic Party viewpoint. Dickie Cranwell is not only “sharp-tongued,” as the Post describes him, but a Machiavellian genius who, after years in the General Assembly, knows where all the levers of power are. He is the consummate legislative insider. Politics in the Old Dominion will undoubtedly become much more interesting to follow. Whether he can win elections for Democratic Party candidates remains to be seen.

Democratic candidate Tim Kaine is more than holding his own in the money-raising end of the gubernatorial campaign — raising $10 million so far, compared to $8.6 million for Jerry Kilgore, according to the Roanoke Times. But the Kilgore camp professes not to be worried. First, Kilgore has yet to collect on promised assistance from the Republican National Committee. Second, he hasn’t yet called on the GOP’s No. 1 fund raiser, President Bush, to help out.

And third, Kilgore is making inroads among the moneybags who’d helped bankroll Mark Warner’s 2001 campaign. Sayeth the Times:

Kilgore reported two sizable contributions from business executives who backed Warner in 2001, including a founding partner in Warner’s Northern Virginia venture capital firm. Mark Kington of Alexandria, who contributed $131,000 to Warner’s campaign, has given Kilgore a total of $75,000 – including $25,000 since April 1. And the Chesapeake contracting company Armada/Hoffler Enterprises, which also contributed to Warner, gave Kilgore $10,000 during the past two months.

Quipped Tim Murtaugh, Kilgore’s press secretary: “The Mark Warner money machine has not opened its coffers to Tim Kaine.”

On the other hand, Warner helped raise $1 million for Kaine at a single fundraising event he hosted for his party mate on May 24 in Tysons Corner. And Warner, one of the biggest moneybags of them all (latest Virginia Business net worth estimate: $180 million), has contributed $60,000 so far to the Kaine campaign.

The Newport News Daily Press has two editorials this morning (here and here)on the gubernatorial race. Both are highly critical of Jerry Kilgore; the second is mildly critical of Tim Kaine.

In the second editorial is a tantalizing hint that the DP‘s endorsement is up for grabs, offering Russ Potts a wonderful opportunity:

Spring is soon to become summer and the two likely major party candidates – Kilgore and Kaine – are still favoring campaign tactics over a public strategy for shaping and improving Virginia’s future. In this manner, the two men hope to demonstrate their worthiness for higher office.

Just wondering: Is there anybody else out there?

Yes, Russ Potts is “out there.”

You gotta love it. Sen, R. Creigh Deeds, D-Bath, a candidate for attorney general, has proposed slapping a Geographic Positioning System (GPS) tracking device around the ankles of sex offenders who had been sentenced with prison terms of 10 years or more.

“There’s no science out there that says these sex offenders can be rehabilitated,” Deeds told the Charlottesville Daily Progress. Oklahoma, he noted, uses GPS devices to track the whereabouts of registered sex offenders at a cost of about $9,000 per offender per year. Tagging all of Virginia’s 13,000 sex offenders could potentially cost as much as $117 million, the Daily Progress said. Yes, Deeds countered, but the cost would come down as manufacturers of the ankle bracelets achieved economies of scale with growing volume.

I’m admitting my ignorance here. Are those 13,000 “violent sex offenders” all child molesters? Or do they include rapists, wife beaters and others convicted of crimes against adults? From my understanding, rapists and wife beaters–as much as they richly deserve their time in jail–are not considered incorrigible and, therefore, are less of a threat than the child molesters.

If we could bring down the cost to a few million dollars, the idea would be well worth it. With the cable news networks fanning the flames of hysteria every time some poor child is abducted in Florida or Arizona, mothers of young children across the country are consumed with fear. Deeds’ idea, though a little nutty sounding, might give them some piece of mind.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has placed a 175-mile swath running from Charlottesville to Gettysburg on its list of the nation’s most endangered historic places. The region encompasses six presidential homes, including James Madison’s Montpelier, Civil War battlefields and other historic sites too numerous to mention. Sadly, this picturesque piedmont of small towns and elegant horse farms is under threat by metastasizing growth in the Washington metro area.

The Washington Post, in “Trust Decries Development in Tri-State Area,” notes that a coalition of 100 groups, working under the banner of “Journey Through Hallowed Ground,” is seeking a designation from the Federal Highway Administration naming parts of Routes 15 and 20 as a National Scenic Byway. The coalition also is developing a teaching curriculum about the area at a local community college, promoting “heritage tourism” focused on the area’s many historic homes and other sites and studying the creation of a “socially responsible” investment fund to purchase land it views as threatened.

The point person in this effort is Cate Magennis Wyatt, former Secretary of Commerce and Trade in the Wilder administration. Wyatt, who lives in the village of Waterford, founded by Quakers in the 18th century, stands right in the path of unbridled growth in Loudoun County. But instead of seeking recourse to the usual array of ineffective local growth controls, she’s pursuing a market-based strategy to preserve the land she loves. First step: Create awareness that there’s something worth saving. Second step, find market-based solutions. Writes the Post:

She said that she hopes to build a public-private effort that will prove that heritage tourism can make money and that she is seeking the resources to buy endangered land to protect it. “We fully recognize that landowners have rights to sell their land, and we are earnestly trying to find a means to purchase land at market rates,” she said.

The people of the piedmont have the most to lose if their homes are overrun by McMansions and crossroads shopping centers. But all Virginians have a stake in this region. I have spent many memorable weekends motoring through the back roads of the piedmont, admiring the manicured, fenced-in fields and the old homes, and enjoying the fruit of the region’s many vineyards. There is no place more beautiful in Virginia, save possibly the Shenandoah Valley. It is the back yard of the Washington and Richmond regions, and allowing it to be despoiled with careless growth is the communal equivalent of junking our own properties with cast-off refrigerators and rusting cars.

Yet Wyatt is right: We must balance our conservationist impulse with respect for property rights, which Virginians also cherish. Let’s hope she can find the formula.

Today’s Washington Post online chat with columnist Marc Fisher has some commentary on Jim’s water ferry post that’s immediately below this one.

There was one exchange in the chat that reminded me of a comment someone made here some time ago–there are still dirt roads in Virgnia:

Chantilly, Va.: Hi Marc: I don’t know how closely you pay attention to goings-on in lovely Loudoun County, but you might find it amusing that homes costing close to a million bucks a pop are going up just west of South Riding, and the only access to those developments is Braddock Road, which is STILL UNPAVED out there!

Most people probably think of Braddock Road as a major, multi-lane highway, but it gets narrower and narrower as you move west, and by the time it ends at Route 15 it probably looks just like it did when British General Braddock used it to fight Indians back in the mid-1700s.

You will soon be hearing frenzied traffic reports from such heretofore obscure intersections as Braddock Road at Pleasant Valley Road. This county is nuts.

Marc Fisher: And there’s a lot more coming through the pipeline. If the Loudoun board gets its way, the county will maintain its position as America’s fastest growing for quite some time to come.

I’m wondering if it’s the county that’s nuts for allowing developments off a dirt road like this or if it’s the buyers who are nuts.

I’ve been harping on the theme that there are abundant alternatives to the tax-and-build approach to solving Virginia’s traffic congestion woes. No one alternative constitutes a silver bullet. But maybe 10, 20 or 30 small alternatives, each serving a distinct niche, could add up to a system-wide solution. The latest idea, which may or may not be financially practicable, comes from the District of Columbia: Water ferries.

According to today’s Washington Post, “D.C. Plans River Ferry Experiment,” our neighbors across the Potomac River are exploring plans to put a ferry service into effect by next year for destinations on the Potomac and Anacostia rivers. Writes the Post: “At least four companies have expressed interest in securing the $500,000 contract for an 18-month pilot program that would run a water coach or ferry serving commuters in the mornings and evenings and tourists during the day.”

The obvious advantage of a ferry service: It does not require building roads or building rail lines, just ferry docks. It’s encouraging that other cities — New York, San Francisco, Seattle — operate what the Post describes as “thriving” ferry systems for commuters. So do cities in other parts of the world. Why doesn’t Virginia? The Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries offer miles and miles of nearly cost-free right of way.

A 1999 Virginia Department of Transportation study concluded that a commuter service from Woodbridge to the Navy Yard in D.C. would cost about as much as a commuter rail trip. Unofrtunately, that’s not much of an endorsement — commuter rail, to my way of thinking, is not always a good investment of public dollars. To be a viable alternative for Virginia, ferries would have to provide a better financial pay-off than that. We’re going to need some creative thinking if the ferry idea is to prove feasible.

I’m thinking of writing a column on this topic for the next edition of the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine. Any observations on the “water ferry” transportation alternative, and how a ferry service could be made financially viable, would be most welcome.

Republican Attorney General Candidate Steve Baril is pulling no punches in his duel with Del. Bob McDonnell, R-Virginia Beach. In today’s campaign missive, he accused McDonnell of “wielding his influence in the General Assembly to make money and intimidate state agencies.” Stated the press release:

Over the last six years alone, McDonnell has represented dozens of clients before 17 different state boards and agencies. He has made between $150,000 and $700,000 as a result of the unethical practice. This was brought to light in a Virginian-Pilot editorial in 2003, which stated, “McDonnell led the pack far-and-away” of representing clients before state agencies. The Pilot added that McDonnell routinely fails to “identify his clients by name,” and “Republican McDonnell is repeating the mistakes of prominent Democrats when their party was in power.” …

“How can an ordinary citizen expect to get a fair shake in a dispute before state boards or agencies when wealthy corporations and special interest groups hire the powerful Chairman of the House Courts of Justice Committee to plead their side?” Baril asked. “The obvious answer is, they don’t.” Baril called on McDonnell to disclose every case and every client, because “the voters have a right to know.”

If elected, Baril promised, he would ill re-introduce the same bill Jerry Kilgore proposed in 2001 to prohibit legislators from representing clients before state agencies. Of course, if McDonnell is guilty of what Baril accuses him of, so are a lot of other state senators and delegates. Baril’s statement didn’t note why Kilgore’s bill never became law. My guess is that Baril’s bill wouldn’t be any more likely to win the approval of…. who? legislators who represent clients before state agencies?

George Fitch understands the connection between transportation and land use, and he’s the only one willing to talk about it. Unfortunately, he’s addressing small audiences and getting coverage only from the suburban weeklies, so there’ s no one to hear him. This comes from the Fauquier Times-Democrat:

Traffic congestion could best be eased, Fitch said, using political restraint and common-sense development.”First, we need to lock up the transportation trust fund and stop raiding it,” he said. “Then, we need to stop the bleeding once and for all that is causing a lot of traffic gridlock. We need to coordinate land-use with developments.”

That means, he explained in more detail, that construction plans should be tied at the hip to transportation improvements or developments, and that without the latter, the former should not commence. It also means, he added a few minutes later, demanding more accountability and cooperation from existing transportation officials.”I have a plan,” Fitch said, “(that says) VDOT, you’re going to be evaluated on how well you relive traffic congestion. Nothing else.”

No, Ray Hyde, reforming land use won’t cure all of our transportation woes. But building a bunch of roads and extending METRO rail without reforming the prevailing scattered, low-density pattern of development won’t cure any of our transportation woes. And it’ll cost us a lot in taxes to boot.

Too bad we’re not reading Fitch’s analysis in the Washington Post or Richmond Times-Dispatch. Until the Mainstream Media stop conducting he-said, she-said journalism, there’s no hope that voters will develop a more profound understanding of the issues.

The Family Foundation latest email alert, ‘Watching to Governor’s Education Initiative’ warns of Governor Warner, the NEA and VEA’s hidden agendas behind ‘pre-kindergarten education.’

“While at first glance the proposal seems innocuous, the push for government based early childhood education programs can be traced to organizations on the far left such as Children’s Defense Fund and the National Education Association (NEA). And anytime those organizations are behind something, there is more than meets the eye. It usually means that parents lose more of their rights to make decisions in the lives of their children, and government is going to spend a lot of taxpayer money.”

The Family Foundation went on to say…

“For several years The Family Foundation and other pro-family groups have fought changes to Virginia’s day care regulations supported by the Warner administration. These changes would be damaging for several reasons, including the fact that the new regulations would drive up the cost of day care already barely affordable for many families, and many faith-based day care centers would not be able to afford the changes and would be forced to close. Such a loss would be devastating to many families. Already we hear of the day care ‘crisis,’ or lack of affordable day care for many. The new regulations would add to the problem, and would likely lead to the government stepping in to provide day care, at taxpayer expense, expanding public education to the years prior to kindergarten.”

“And that’s exactly what Governor Warner, the NEA, and its Virginia counterpart, the Virginia Education Association (VEA), want. Not only will it be a gigantic money grab for government run schools, but it will also give more opportunity to the VEA to ‘educate’ children with its political agenda starting at even younger ages.”

Holy Moses and pass the cornbread — Day-care ‘Reeducation’ camps! Who’da thunk it… Hmm, hows ’bout dem ‘Educrat’ apple polishers?

~ the blue dog