Bacon's Rebellion

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

It’s unscientific. It’s shameless. It’s a USA Today online poll where you can vote your favorite site for the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

Today’s Daily Press has another scathing editorial on the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries scandal. It seems that everyone who is anyone has commented on the state auditor’s findings.

Except the Governor. Except the three gubernatorial candidates. Except the six Lt. Gov. candidates. Except the three Attorney General candidates. I suppose the current Attorney General has commented, according to the editorial: “A spokesman for the attorney general says she plans no action.”

If anyone has seen comments from the group I mentioned, let me know and I will correct the record. Are they saying “no comment” or have they even been asked? I know the opinions of candidates on a host of issues where as officeholders they would have only marginal influence; I’d like to know their opinions on something that they would confront directly if they were elected.

The resignation of Phil Shucet as VDOT Commissioner, announced today, has to count as disappointing news. He was a breath of fresh air in the Virginia bureaucracy.

Our gubernatorial candidates ought to be asked things like, “Who in Gov. Warner’s cabinet would you like to see stay on?”

Since he was hired at the end of a half-year national search, Shucet has avoided partisan entanglements and has won respect and praise from Republicans and Democrats in the General Assembly.

Warner said he felt Shucet may have stayed longer if Virginia were not the only state in the nation not to allow governors to serve successive terms.

“Part of the struggle is to get people to stay on to the end of your term,” the governor said.

If Shucet had bi-partisan support, Warner’s would-be successors should have mentioned it. Shucet said he resigned for personal reasons; it would be a shame if he resigned, as Warner hints, because he didn’t think the next governor would keep him in place.

I’d say the weekend endorcements were only the beginning. Potts will find alignments with centrist House members, too–mostly because the RPVA keeps getting out-flanked, not by the Democrats, but by its own ‘flat-earth’ wing. (All the Dems have to do at the moment is just stay out of the way while this army turns in on itself.) Time is against Mr. Reciprocal. Bolling has gotten into a weird–as campaigns go–sort of reverse-publicity warp, wherein the more he spends, the more folks hear about him, the worse he will do. His best strategy would be to pull his ads and go into hiding until June 15. But, of course, he won’t do that. So let’s go ahead and call this one. Connoughton beats him. Main Street (read ‘Mark Warner’) Republicans–those who understand that it takes money to build the roads and schools that build the businesses that build the state–are with Baril because Steve talks that business language, and because McDonnell, though smart he may be, has inexplicably allowed himself to become–in lots of minds–Pat Robertson’s poster boy, and the darling of those glassy-eyed Kool-Aid drinkers of the hard right.

Today’s Washington Post, “A Bane Amid the Housing Boom: Rising Foreclosures,” describes the rising number of mortgage foreclosures nationally. Sayeth the Post: “Foreclosure rates rose in 47 states in March, according to Foreclosure.com, an online foreclosure listing service. The rates in Florida, Texas and Colorado are more than twice the national average. Even in New York City and Boston, where real estate markets are white-hot, foreclosures are rising in working-class neighborhoods.

“Virginia, Maryland and the District have relatively low foreclosure rates — analysts say troubled owners in those booming markets can still sell their homes before facing foreclosure. Should the nation’s housing bubbles deflate, as many economists and federal officials expect, the foreclosures could prefigure a national crisis. Americans now shoulder record levels of housing debt — more than 8 percent of homeowners spend at least half their income on their mortgage.”

Regulators blame mortgage brokers and bankers who, while promoting the dream of home ownership, have crafted ever-riskier ways for Americans with poor credit to buy homes. Interest-only and adjustable-rate mortgages account for 63 percent of new mortgages. Now policymakers are wondering if the crusade to boost home ownership is backfiring. As debt levels rise, home ownership is destroying wealth for millions of working class Americans rather than creating it.