Bacon's Rebellion

…for allowing me to rejoin this stable of thoroughbreds. My mother told me once, in a fit of exasperation, that she could leave me in a strange country and in two hours I’d know every loose screw and odd-ball within 200 miles. And that’s before she evey met any of ya’ll! I have spent my time away in productive pursuit of knowledge and understanding. I know my role here is to catch the spears you throw, and I am game for that. And while you’re limbering up, I’ll go over a couple of things I’ve reaffirmed as truisms: you can’t borrow yourself out of debt, you can’t pave your way out of congestion. I’m still having a little trouble with ‘human settlement patterns,’ but I have figured out why good Baptists don’t engage in intercourse standing up. They don’t want folks to think they’re dancing!

Today’s The Washington Post has published an article describing the difficulties that thousands of Washingtonians on the exurban periphery have getting broadband Internet access. Staff Writer Amit R. Paley quotes one woman as saying, “My husband is just screaming his brains out because it’s so slow,” she said. “It’s killing us. It’s absolutely killing us.”

My reaction: Duh! What did you expect?

A remarkable number of people who move into the exurbs, with their low taxes and low cost of housing, bring with them an expectation of an urban level of services. It just doesn’t work that way. Not only does scattered, disconnected, low-density development make transportation expensive to provide, it makes utilities expensive to provide, too.

The Post quotes Steve E. Collier, vice president of emerging technologies at the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative, as saying that subsidies from the federal government probably will be needed to ensure that high-speed Internet access extends to the most far-flung parts of the country. The Post doesn’t quote anyone mentioning the obvious alternative: If broadband is really important to you, don’t move to the stinkin’ exurbs! Or if you do move, don’t expect everyone else to subsidize your poorly planned locational decision!!

The Richmond Times-Dispatch ran an article this morning about R. Jerry Parker Jr., the man who is bankrolling the Virginia Conservative Action PAC. VCAP has donated $10,000 to $25,000 to each of the six Republican primary challengers to incumbents who voted in favor of last year’s $1.4 billion tax increase. Parker has personally contributed $212,000 to VCAP this year — 85 percent of the money collected. Founder and CEO of Chesapeake Capital Corp. in Henrico County, a $1.6 billion hedge fund, Parker hired Republican activist Robin DeJarnette to run the PAC. Sayeth the T-D:

Parker contends the tax increases were unnecessary, pointing to the eventual $1 billion surplus and an improving economy. “I’d like to play offense and say we need to reduce taxes,” he said. “We can’t even get there. We can’t even convince Republicans to hold the line.”

The May 23 edition of Bacon’s Rebellion has been published. You can read it online here.

It’s a gorgeous day out there today; I found myself daydreaming thinking of how things could be.

I have a dream. DINOs and RINOs living together in harmony, spending their time on beautiful Shenandoah pastures, holding hands, loving each other and the whole world. No extremists, no party ideologies, no animosities, no partisanship; just the utmost collaboration between good men for the good of all in order to better our lives from cradle to grave. And of course, no limits on government spending–after all, how can you put a limit on doing good?

But I soon came back to reality and came to recognize that such a place already exists. It’s called Utopia!

Enjoy the beautiful day.

PS. I’m sure the faithful readers of this blog, readily recognize the RINO acronym. For those of you who haven’t heard of a DINO before please read “DINO Sighting.”

I couldn’t resist making another reference to the fact that the tolls are going up tomorrow by 67% to 100%, depending on where you get on or off. And not one penny of that money is going to be spent on improving the daily commute of the user’s of the toll road. Rather that money is going to be wasted on the rail to Dulles boondoggle that does nothing to alleviate traffic congestion and will do a lot to attract even more traffic on this toll road and other adjacent roads, as building densities go up.

And the wasteful spending has already begun, even before one additional penny was collected from the toll increase. As reported by channel 7 in Washington, the state is paying $480,000 for their PR blitz. Half-a-million dollars spent for TV ads advertising that the tolls are going up. Do you need a more flagrant example of waste of taxpayer dollars than this?

No matter how you feel about NIMBYism, economic development, energy independence, or tax revenues, you have to be impressed that a number equivalent to 10% of Highland County’s residents turned out for a public hearing on an electricity generating windmill farm project.

A decision on the project is expected next month.

Here’s a question, though: At what point do Virginia localities that consciously deny tax-generating projects lose their credibility in calls for more state funding?

The Honest Leadership for Virginia PAC, a group affiliated with the Republican Governors Association, has started running an ad criticizing Tim Kaine for his claim to have cut taxes during his tenure as major of Richmond. The ad eviscerates Kaine’s ludicrous assertion by pointing out the difference, as we have done here on the Bacon’s Rebellion blog, between cutting tax rates while assessments are soaring, and actually cutting taxes.

As the ad points out, tax assessments on Kaine’s own home rose 37 percent between 1998 and 2001. (Click here to view “Another One”.)

A lot of attack ads twist the truth. In this particular case, I’d say the ad is setting the record straight.

The Kaine campaign response to the ad: Change the subject. Here’s what Kaine Press Secretary Delacey Skinner told the Richmond Times-Dispatch: “What it doesn’t address is the reason [taxes] went up: Jim Gilmore, Jerry Kilgore’s honorary chairman, was passing on huge portions of the public education bill to localities, which is exactly what Jerry Kilgore has proposed doing.”

That’s another way of saying, “OK, taxes went up but it wasn’t our fault.” The point may be debatable, but at least it’s not out-and-out fiction. It’s time to drop the Tim-Kaine-Tax-Cutter claim, which has no basis in fact, and move to the Jim-Gilmore-made-it-do-it defense, which, though lame, has the virtue of not being outright fraudulent.

I started a new thread because I simply don’t subscribe to the premise that the question raised by the Jaded-JD is a “tough question for anti-taxers.”

Simply put, the premise of the original post is a jaded question. It’s not a matter of cutting–it’s a matter of how much should we allow government to grow. Under no circumstances should government be allowed to grow faster than the rate of population growth plus inflation.

Unfortunately, since our greedy politicians can’t control their spending habits, it’s up to us to make sure that we set some concrete spending limits for them. That’s why we must enact a Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) that sets specific limits on government growth and mandates refunds of budget surpluses (see; “Taxpayer Bill of Rights.”) Had we enacted such a law years ago, billions of dollars would have been refunded to the taxpayers as has been the case in Colorado, which enacted TABOR in the mid-1990s.

From an economic perspective we’re simply painting ourselves into a corner. Tax increases (both at the state and local levels) have been growing much faster than the growth of personal incomes. This cannot be allowed to continue; if you carry this argument to its ultimate conclusion, taxes will eventually consume 100% of personal incomes. What will our greedy tax-and-spend commissars do at that point? I doubt that the Jaded-JD would want to tackle this question.

Talking about the Jaded-JD, I have developed a great dislike (distrust?) of bloggers who post anonymously or use pseudonyms to disguise their identities. I can understand that sometimes anonymous posting is unavoidable; but when posting political commentary, one should have the conviction to stand behind their statements. If one doesn’t have the confidence and passion to put their name beside their comments, I cannot take them very seriously.

Many thanks to Jeremy Hinton, who conveyed to Bacon’s Rebellion the file on the General Assembly website listing the “citizen members” of the Statewide Transportation Analysis and Recommendation Task Force (START). This is the group empowered by Senate Finance Chair John Chichester to develop a transportation action plan for submission to the 2005 General Assembly. Serving with 10 members of the state senate (whose names I will post as soon as I get them), these individuals will have disproportionate influence in shaping the senate’s legislative package next year. They include:

• Bob Archer; 2004 Chairman, Virginia Chamber of Commerce; General Manager, Blue Ridge Beverage; Salem, VA
• Ben J. Davenport, Jr; 2005 Chairman, Virginia Chamber of Commerce; First Piedmont Corporation; Chatham, VA
• Rocky Hedrick; President, Fort Chiswell Construction Company; Bluefield, VA
• Gerald P, McCarthy; Executive Director, Virginia Environmental Endowment; Richmond, VA
• Pierce R. Homer; Secretary of Transportation, Richmond, VA
• Deborah K. Stearns; Managing Director, Advantis Real Estate; Norfolk, VA
• Margaret E.G. Vanderhye; Former member, National Capital Planning Commission; McLean, VA
• Robert L. Calhoun; Redmon, Peyton & Braswell, LLP; Alexandria, VA
• Susan Dewey; Executive Director, VA Housing & Development Authority; Richmond, VA
• Hugh Keogh; President & CEO, Virginia Chamber of Commerce; Richmond, VA
• William R. Ermatinger; Vice President, Human Resources & Management; Northrup Grumman; Newport News, VA
• Wiley F. Mitchell, Jr.; Willcox and Savage; Norfolk, VA
• Barbara Stafford; Executive Director, Giles County Chamber of Commerce; Pearisburg, VA
• Robert G. Templin; President, Northern Virginia Community College; Annandale, VA
• Timothy Robertson; Bay Shore Enterprises; Virginia Beach, VA

Would you say this group represents a wide diversity of viewpoints on transportation strategy? Or would you say that these individuals were selected for their likely agreement with Sen. Chichester on the necessity of raising taxes to pay for building more roads and rail projects? See my analysis in the comments section — and please, bloggers, add your own knowledge and commentary.

The Jaded JD has a question for Virginia’s anti-tax faction, a group he identifies with Norm Leahy at One Man’s Trash and our own Phil Rodokanakis.

I think the multi-part question is fair and deserves a thoughtful answer. Hopefully, the principals will respond. The JD shortchanges the level of detail Norm has offered on many occasions as to how he’d balance reducing services along with cutting taxes in my opinion, but that’s a minor quibble.

The implication, whenever critics assail the anti-taxers, is that raising taxes is always the responsible thing to do. That bothers me. Few notice that alongside the new tax dollars going to fund Medicaid, transportation, and education, budgets for failing or underperforming agencies and programs continue to rise without question. I don’t see a lot of difference in the alleged bankruptcy of the tax cutters’ philosophy and the reflexive raise taxes philosophy.

The anti-taxers do have enough front men advocating the broad outlines of their beliefs. What they need are foot soldiers with eyeshades identifying and challenging the myriad of expenditures the supposed “cut to the bone” government countenances. A little research and some brave stands would go a long way to increasing the anti-taxers’ credibility.

Just when you thought everyone had dropped the “droopy drawers” bill, somebody picks it up again, waves it, and we plunge back into a paroxysm of petty partisanship.

Barnie Day told the true story of this bill some time ago: a well-meaning Delegate offered a ill-advised bill, a colleague castigated him, and a chain of events was set in motion that had a majority vote for the bill as a protest against the castigation. This wasn’t an issue of partisanship. It was an issue of collegiality.

Apparently a recent editorial on Texas cheerleaders (don’t ask) in the Richmond Times-Dispatch ended by essentially laying the blame for the “droopy drawers” bill on Democrats. Knowing the truth of the matter, that was a cheap shot. Well, let no cheap shot go unanswered.

Today the Richmond Times-Dispatch “Correspondent of the Day” is former Delegate Chip Woodrum, also privy to the real story of the bill. Does Woodrum decry the misrepresentation of the bill as a partisan matter? No, his “na na na booboo” letter advises the “too tight bow tie” editorial staff that a majority of Democrats voted against the bill, while a majority of Republicans voted for it.

I’m glad each side has fired its broadside so we can go back to the important issues, like Accent-gate.

As usual, The Washington Post misses the important story while focusing on the effluvia of the gubernatorial campaign. In today’s article, “Chichester Faults Road Funding Idea,” Michael D. Shear focuses on Senate Finance Chair John Chichester’s implicit criticism of Jerry Kilgore’s transportation plan, while burying in the last three paragraphs the fact that Chichester launched a senate study commission that will “spend the next several months developing an action plan to improve the state’s transportation system.”

Forget the drivel coming out of the Kaine and Kilgore campaigns regarding transportation. John Chichester, backed by his senate allies and a well-funded business lobby, is driving the agenda on transportation policy in Virginia. Chichester, not Kaine or Kilgore, will develop the transportation proposals that get considered in the 2006 General Assembly session, at least on the senate side. While Kaine and Kilgore spend the next six months just trying to get elected, Chichester will be laying the groundwork for his transportation solution. Chichester is the man to watch.

The commission, which Chichester announced Thursday, is called START (Statewide Transportation Analysis and Recommendation Task Force). It will meet four times before the General Assembly session begins next year. The deliberations of this group, consisting of 10 state senators and 15 citizen members, are far more important than anything Kaine and Kilgore have to say about transportation during the gubernatorial campaign.

I thought Tyler Whitley of the Richmond Times-Dispatch came up with the description of the week this morning when he called Russ Potts’ appearance at a Chamber of Commerce breakfast meeting “bagels and bluster.”

What fascinated me was a new (at least to me) idea that Potts’ “Blue Ribbon Commission” would put on the table to address transportation: double-decking. I’ve got to admit, there’s plenty of open space available above Virginia’s highways. We’ve developed everything else; why not reach for the sky?

Russ, tell us more.