Bacon's Rebellion

Tim Kaine has matched Jerry Kilgore’s health care plan with one of his own. According to the May 27 edition of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the thrust of his plan is to encourage small businesses to offer medical insurance to their employees and, thus, reduce the huge number of Virginians–one out of seven–lacking healthcare coverage. Strategically, the idea is sound. The best way to increase access to the healthcare system is to encourage more businesses to offer medical insurance. The devil is in the details.

Kaine wants to use tax credits to encourage small businesses to offer the coverage. I’m wary of expanding the use of tax credit when Jerry Kilgore recommends them to advance his healthcare plan, and I’m wary when Tim Kaine recommends them. Kaine admits this his proposal could cost the state as much as $250 million a year if all small businesses signed on. His argument that the state would recoup some of that money through lower Medicaid pay-outs doesn’t hold water. The plan would benefit only working Virginians, and working Virginians don’t qualify for Medicaid.

By relying on tax credits, Kaine avoids confronting the reasons why health insurance are unaffordable to begin with. One reason is that Virginia mandates more medical benefits in a health insurance plan than almost any other state. Insurance companies are restricted by state law from offering an affordable, “bare bones” policy that covers only essential medical needs at a lower price. That leaves working class Virginians with a choice between a gold-plated plan and… nothing. That’s the underlying problem, and Kaine needs to address it directly

Kaine’s second idea is a good one. He would encourage the creation of voluntary insuance pools that would allow small businesses to spread risk and buy insurance more affordably. According to the Times-Dispatch, “He said he will work to overturn legal restraints that keep trade associations from starting their own insurance pools.” Now that’s addressing an underlying problem. As is so often the case, some kind of government rule or regulation is interfering with the workings of the marketplace.

“We must remember that religion is a universal sentiment which is inside everybody and has been inside every person since the beginning of the world. It is not something which we must give to the child” ~ Maria Montessori

The latest from the Liberator Online:

“Public schools are government-established, politician- and bureaucrat-controlled, fully politicized, taxpayer-supported, authoritarian socialist institutions. In fact, the public-school system is one of the purest examples of socialism existing in America…“If freedom is to survive in America, it will be necessary to eliminate the psychologically crippling and mentally debilitating authoritarian socialist public-school system that inevitably inflicts upon all of its students a long and thorough indoctrination in authoritarianism and convinces them that government force is a valid and necessary means to achieve virtually any desired ends. “This must be replaced with a system involving freedom and democracy; that is, a system of individual choice known as free enterprise in which students would actually be genuine customers, patronizing genuine education businesses.” ~ Thomas L. Johnson, professor emeritus of biological sciences at the University of Mary Washington. From an op-ed in the September 26, 2004, issue of The Free Lance-Star.
…………………

In December 2005, The Virginia Family Foundation distributed an email titled ‘Information Alert: VEA pushes homosexual agenda in schools’, the FF goes on to say “the Virginia Education Association (VEA), the Virginia component of the National Education Association, had as one of its ten legislative goals for 2005 the repeal of the Marriage Affirmation Act, HB751.”

Last week, The Family Foundation warned, “The VEA is now exposed for what it accurately is – a condensed version of the left-wing National Education Association. The VEA has moved outside of the academic realm and is now working to redefine marriage for American families. Action needs to be taken to confine the VEA to its educational sphere and to prevent it from meddling in social issues.”

Blue Dog Note: It’s going to be interesting to see who will be denied VEA contributions, or the support of the Family Foundation in the 2005 election based on a single social issue — Gay Marriages. So, due to liberal and conservative socially-engineered contributions, one can conclude with mathematical certainty that while hard work and knowledge will get you close, and attitude will get you there, it’s the special interests questionnaires that will put you in the General Assembly.

It’s not a case of ‘old school’, but ‘new math’ — Don’t you agree?

~ the blue dog

From today’s Washington Post, “Many Buyers Opt for Risky Mortgages“: More than one third of the mortgages written in the Washington metro area this year are interest-only mortgages, loans that allow home buyers to pay back only the interest while delaying payment on the loan principal for years. Housing prices have gotten so exorbitant that home buyers are turning to these risky mortgages as a way to cut their payments to a level they can afford.

Explains the Post: “The loans are attractive because their initial monthly payments are tantalizingly low — about $1,367 a month for a $320,000 mortgage, compared with about $1,842 a month for a traditional 30-year, fixed-rate loan. If home prices fall, though, borrowers could lose big.”

This kind of flimsy financing is a sure sign of a market top. I was warning about the real estate bubble in November 2003, but I didn’t have a sense then of imminent danger. I do now. (Ed Risse reads the tea leaves similarly. Read his more detailed treatment in “The Shelter Crisis.”) Housing prices cannot increase at a sustained rate of 20 percent per year, as they have in Northern Virginia, or even 10 percent a year, as they have elsewhere, when personal incomes are increasing at the rate of 5 or so percent per year. The collapse is inevitable, and when it comes, it’s going to cause a lot of pain. Many, many homeowners, especially the poor saps who put little money down, will find themselves with negative equity.

There will be tremendous political ramifications, too. Homeowners hate rising property taxes, but they’re willing to swallow them when property values are rising. I may be paying an extra $1,000 a year in taxes this year, but my house just increased $15,000 in value. I can always borrow against my increased equity. Once property values drop, local governments will face a crisis. They will have to increased property tax rates dramatically to compensate for falling assessments. But as homeowners see their net worth shrinking, they will find their taxes to be far more burdensome. Just as a collapse in housing prices is inevitable, particularly in Northern Virginia, so is the political upheaval that inevitably will follow.

Sabato on referenda, the Free Lance Star, 5-23-05:

“Now, Virginia is not a populist state. But this rhetoric seems to be taking hold to a degree, dangerously so in my opinion. This is not Jeffersonian Jefferson was violently opposed to anything like initiative and referendum.”

And this:

“Referendum and initiative don’t work very well. It’s controlled by special interests and big money,” Sabato said. “It’s had exactly the opposite effect that the progressives thought it would have. It’s another bad reform idea that sounds good.”

Kilgore says Jefferson got it wrong. I don’t think so.

Chris Flores of the Daily Press has a lot of new information on a story Jim Bacon highlighted earlier in the week–a procurement lawsuit against the Virginia Department of Education.

In a nutshell, it appears the Department of Education awarded a contract to a firm called “Teachers” for a special education teacher recruitment website in 2002. No information is given on how many bids were solicited or received. One year later, the Department apparently decided it wanted a more comprehensive website, so it put out a bid. It appears, from Flores’ reporting, that only Teachers bid on it until the Department, mandated to seek a minority bidder, solicited a bid from E & E. Those were the only two bids received. E & E was the low bidder and from there a series of alleged actions designed to swing the contract to Teachers occurred, leading to the lawsuit. I hope the courts are able to fairly sort it all out; the allegations are serious.

I don’t know all the ins and outs of procurement regulations, but it boggles my mind that in a world where web designers and developers are a dime a dozen, only two bids were received. That’s why I wonder how many bids were received on the 2002 solicitation. Once you get a contract with a state agency, it’s natural that you would have some advantage on additional, similar contracts under the “reinvent the wheel” principle. It’s noteworthy that the Department of Education decided to create a whole new website, instead of modifying/enhancing the existing site that Teachers had established. (As a snide aside, I wonder how many individuals from the Department of Education’s bloated bureaucracy had input into this website. I guess one of them couldn’t be a web designer who would do it “in-house.”)

The “system” seemed to work, if you consider that the Department of Education, as required and cajoled to do, set out on its own to get a minority bidder when no minority bidder responed what probably was a public solicitation. Showing what this lawsuit is really about, however, is this from the plaintiff’s attorney, H. Scott Johnson, Jr.:

Teachers has used the Virginia contract to win work in other states, which is precisely what E&E wanted to do, says the lawsuit, which asks for compensation for those damages.

“They put a lot of time and money and effort into it because they were going to use it as a springboard to win contracts in other states,” Johnson said.

So many government troughs, so little time.

At last, there’s something we can ALL agree upon: It’s bad public policy to provide Medicaid reimbursement for Viagara and other erectile dysfunction drugs to sex offenders. No one–not Jesse Jackson, not even the A.C.L.U. — objected when Gov. Mark R. Warner signed an emergency regulation blocking the benefit for 52 of Virginia’s registered offenders. The very idea of subsidizing the libido of sex offenders is so ludicrous that only a government bureaucracy acting on auto-pilot or the satirical Web publication The Onion — one of today’s headlines: “Bush Caught in One of His Own Terror Traps“) — could have come up with it.

But there’s a larger question: Why is Medicaid subsidizing erectile dysfunction drugs for anyone?

According to Frank Green’s story in today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimate that Medicaid spends about $38 million a year nationally on erectile dysfunction drugs. With about one out of 40 U.S. residents living in the Old Dominion, that would imply about $1 million a year paid here in Virginia.

Medicaid is busting the state budget. Shouldn’t we be husbanding our finite resources for long-term care of the infirm, and for treatment of serious illnesses among the poor rather than for a lifestyle enhancement? Given our parlous fiscal circumstances, paying public dollars to buy Viagara for anyone is a scandal.

Unfortunately, Gov. Warner cannot sign a bill simply payments to the broader Medicaid population. Virginia appears to be bound by a 1998 Medicaid order mandating coverage for the drugs. (I wonder whose lobbyist got that rule inserted?) Perhaps it’s time for Virginia’s congressional delegation to get to work on reversing that order.

Today I had the pleasure of lunch with Norm Leahy, proprietor of one my favorite blogs, One Man’s Trash. Our discussion was wide-ranging and animated, almost like being in the Bacon’s Rebellion comment section. We agreed that Jeff Schapiro was the gold standard in balanced political reporting, unmet needs is the great issue of our time, and Russ Potts’ double-decker highway idea was sheer genius.

Well, maybe I’m stretching our agreement.

In person, he was an impressive guy. Agree or disagree with him, he’s a unique voice in the blogosphere.

The quality of the roads in Virginia’s major metropolitan areas does not stack up very well to that of other cities, according to data compiled by The Road Information Project and published today in USA Today. According to a chart in USA Today, the “Virginia Beach” metro area and Washington. D.C. metro areas are in the middle of the pack–roughly in line with national averages, which are nothing to write home about. Richmond’s roads are measurably worse.

The numbers break out like this:

Virginia Beach: 28 percent good; 23 percent fair; 27 percent mediocre; 22 percent bad.

Washington, D.C.: 30 percent good; 17 percent fair; 28 percent mediocre; 24 percent bad.

Richmond: 18 percent good; 26 percent fair; 32 percent mediocre; 23 percent bad.

Now, go read Steve Haner’s column in Bacon’s Rebellion, “The Transportation SOLs,” which argues that spending on road maintenance is crowding out dollars for new construction. According to Steve’s numbers, maintenance will consume all state road dollars by 2018. (See chart.) I don’t know where he gets his numbers, and I don’t know how good they are because I haven’t had a chance to examine the assumptions embedded in them. But given that those are the only numbers we’ve got, and given the already mediocre condition of Virginia’s roads, it’s understandable why Virginia lawmakers believe we have a time bomb on our hands.

One Man’s Trash commented yesterday on the news of William Woodfin’s resignation as Director of the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. A scathing auditor’s report on numerous irregularities in the agency was the proximate cause.

Today, editorials here, here, and here reacted, with the Virginian-Pilot being typical:

A state auditor’s report identifying rampant waste and abuse at the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries presents a stunning indictment of the goings-on at a major agency.

Reading the account of personal junkets, high-priced trinkets and overblown “protection” units brings to mind a banana republic where kingpins stomp around in safari hats and expensive boots, lording over the peons who keep the bosses supplied with game and sport.

Where were the checks and balances? If not for a citizen whistle-blower and the state’s fraud, waste, and abuse hotline, the misdeeds, primarily in the enforcement unit, would be continuing full bore.

The Pilot calls on Gov. Warner to replace the agency’s entire Board of Directors.

In state government, few watchdogs exist. That’s why it took citizens to uncover these practices. I suspect that many agency big-wigs are doing things similar in nature to what the Game and Inland Fisheries audit criticized. I hope they take the audit to heart and I hope that Gov. Warner, in his waning months as Governor, reminds his appointees that their jobs are about serving the taxpayers, not collecting perks and building empires.

Blogger Steve Sailor has an explanation for why some states are “red” and the others are “blue.” He calls it Affordable Family Formation. His thesis is as persuasive as any I’ve seen and I think it can explain the red/blue divide in Virginia, too. Hat tip to Mickey Kaus in Slate ….

PS Since we’ve started a little Poly Sci 301 class, we might as well do a little more reading. Professor Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball has guest Professor Alan Abramowitz debunking gerrymandering as an explanation for non-competitive races.

Those wanting an update on “The Shelter Crisis” since Monday can check out the front page of todays The Washington Post Business Section: “Home Sales Continue at Torrid Pace: No Sign Yet of Market Slowing Down Soon.”

Interesting quotes from Greenspan’s talk on Friday and from shelter industry spinners.

Also CNN carried a story yesterday that since 2000 the number of houses priced at over $1-million has doubled. So has the number of folks that are not at the top of the food chain who cannot afford shelter.

It is interesting that when viewed as an economic issue, not a human settlement pattern issue, there is concern for the potential of a house price bust but nothing about the impact if there is no bust and shelter gets farther and farther out of reach in all the regions with Fuller and Florida’s “More, Better Jobs.”

EMR

The NoTollIncrease.com has been urging commuters to boycott the Dulles Toll Road and use alternate parallel routes. Apparently, the boycott had some effect on the first work-day following the toll increase. According to the TimeCommunity.com newspapers, traffic dropped down by 6% on Monday, compared to the Monday traffic counts for the three weeks before the toll increase. The average transaction count for the three weeks prior to the toll increase was: 372,354. Last Monday the toll transaction count dropped to 350,202.

The New York Times has visited Charlottesville and Chilhowie, Va. — Chilhowie, for those not lucky enough to have visited SW Virginia, is a small mill town not far from Bristol — as part of its ongoing “Class Matters” exploration of America’s class divide. Writer David Leonhardt provides a sympathetic portrait of a college drop-out Andy Blevins, who works at a supermarket warehouse, using Blevins to illustrate the factors that work against upward economic mobility for working-class youth. The great barrier today, according to the Times, is getting that college degree.

Of special interest to Bacon’s Rebellion readers are the observations of University of Virginia President John T. Casteen III, who, after years of favoring legacies (to help with fund-raising) and minorities (to correct historical injustices) seems to have awaken to the plight of the white working class. Sayeth the Times:

“The system makes a false promise to students,” said [Casteen], himself the son of a Virginia shipyard worker. Colleges … present themselves as meritocracies in which academic ability and hard work are always rewarded. In fact, he said, many working-class students face obstacles they cannot overcome on their own. …

No flagship state university has a smaller proportion of low-income students than Virginia. Just 8 percent of undergraduates last year came from families in the bottom half of the income distribution, down from 11 percent a decade ago. That change sneaked up on him, Mr. Casteen said, and he has spent a good part of the last year trying to prevent it from becoming part of his legacy. …

Like Virginia, a handful of other colleges are not only increasing financial aid but also promising to give weight to economic class in granting admissions. They say they want to make an effort to admit more low-income students, just as they now do for minorities and children of alumni.

(Thanks to Joyce Dodd for bringing this article to my attention.)

An excerpt from Wayne Madsen’s book, ‘Exposing Karl Rove,’ reads, “He’s America’s Joseph Goebbels. As a 21-year old Young Republican in Texas, Karl Rove not only pimped for Richard Nixon’s chief political dirty tricks strategist Donald Segretti but soon caught the eye of the incoming Republican National Committee Chairman, George H. W. Bush. Rove’s dirty tricks on behalf of Nixon’s 1972 campaign catapulted Rove onto the national stage. From his Eagle’s Nest in the West Wing of the White House, Rove now directs a formidable political dirty tricks operation and disinformation mill.”

Ouch! Did ‘Pat’ edit that?

On Saturday, June 4, invitations have been sent forth to celebrate with the Republican Party and Virginia’s Republican elected officials, candidates and supporters at the Republican Party of Virginia’s annual Commonwealth Gala with Special Guest…

As the Angels stand in ‘Pub orchestra pit and start to play those heavenly evangelic trumpets… Enters the ‘brains behind the bush’, ‘the boy genius’, ‘the man with the plan’, ‘king karl’… Ladies and gentlemen, would you please stand and welcome the one and only ‘turd-blossom’ himself… Mr. Karl Rove!

Yes siree, the Republican boogieman that has systematically and methodically eliminated the Democratic Party from top down on the national level is coming to Virginia for an election year pep rally and fund raising event.

Rumors say that several Howard Dean ‘primal screams’ emitted from Tim Kaine and his campaign staff after learning of the ‘Pub event of the year. And several members of the RaisingKaine.com blog site drank koolaid laced with their new late-night blog buddies, Jim Beam and Jack Daniels.

Do you suppose DNC chairman Howard Dean will speak (i.e. scream) at Tim ‘the choirboy’ Kaine’s upcoming 2005 Virginia Democratic Caucus Gala at the Homestead?

Not likely, but… I heard ex-California Governor Gray Davis was available. He’s the goofy Democratic governor that wanted to raid the state property taxes, which were collected locally to pay for school programs without additional aid from the state, to pay off the state budget deficit.

~ the blue dog

Democrat Bruce Elder will be announcing his candidacy for the 20th District House of Delegates, Saturday 28 May 2005, at the bandstand in Gypsy Hill Park at 1100 a.m. sharp.

Good luck Bruce! But…

It’s only a matter of time before Citizen Bruce discovers his Democratic friends have been watching the red state arising — and are probably in an ‘Evangelical John’ boat seeking refuge with trustworthy Captain Chris Saxman.

Read more about in the AFP Thursday edition, Blue Dog Tales.

~ the blue dog