Bacon's Rebellion

The Boss Man, Jim Bacon, extended something of an invitation to John Behan of Commonwealth Conservative in the comments section of my “Carnival” post. Basically, Jim rekindled the idea of a Virginia blogger conference and expressed interest in possible, but unspecified, cooperative efforts.

I’d like to suggest two interconnected things. First, I think there is a wonderful opportunity right now for Virginia blogs to lead the way in adopting, for lack of a better term, a “Code of Ethics.” Jim has done some good legwork on a couple of the things that would go into such a “code”: disclosure of potential conflicts of interest and civility guidelines. Other VA bloggers have also done some of this. Other items for this “code,” which I would envision as 10 or less bullet points, would deal with anonymous blogging, identification of sources, and corrections.

Secondly, I think there is also an opportunity for VA bloggers, perhaps through the mechanism of this “code,” to reach out to the mainstream media. Bloggers rely on mainstream media for a good bit of their commentary and also act as critics. Bloggers need to demolish the myth, fueled by many mainstream media types, that they are anarchists in pajamas. Adherence to a “code” might defuse some of the skepticism. And, while we’re at it, let’s invite some mainstream media types to at least the 2nd VA blogger conference.

I haven’t thought this all the way through, but I toss it out to Jim, John Behan, and other blog leaders for what it’s worth.

Today’s Wall Street Journal ran an article, “Colleges Get Building Fever,” exploring the connection between tuition hikes and the proliferation of grandiose college/university building projects, including ever more luxurious student unions and other facilities not central to learning. Sayeth the WSJ:

Why is the price of college going up? There are a lot [of] reasons, including declines in state budget support, the ballooning of college bureaucracies and the competition for superstar professors. But also high on the list is what Richard Vedder, an Ohio University economics professor, calls the “country clubization” of universities, as competition for students heats up….

“The reason it’s happening is that we can get away with it,” says the university’s Dr. Vedder. Instead of competing by lowering their prices, he says, universities are competing with “Cadillac facilities because someone else is paying for them.” In Congressional testimony that caught the ear of Republican leaders last month, he cautioned lawmakers against boosting the size of federally funded student grants and loans, arguing that schools would see the increases as an invitation to raise their prices.

The Salt Lick has a response today to a post last week by his guest blogger, “City Slicker.” “City Slicker” asked, “What do Rural Voters Want?”

Salt Lick offers a good answer and an insightful peek into rural Virginia thinking. He plays off an editorial by the Roanoke Times that also answered the “City Slicker” question. I guess Salt Lick is so jaded by the Times that he didn’t notice what I just did: they have already endorsed Tim Kaine (I know, big surprise). After saying both Kaine and Kilgore have staked out the same conservative turf, they conclude:

The expected Democratic and Republican nominees have both pledged to push rural economic development and support education and transportation. But Kilgore especially promises to spend money one minute and cut taxes the next.

Would he or Kaine be more likely to support and fund the entire package – improved roads and other infrastructure, a better-educated work force and development incentives- that rural Virginia needs to attract companies and prosper?

It falls to voters to determine who is more likely to come through, but here’s a clue: Nothing will happen without the money.

The inference is pretty clear. Their man Kaine will make “the entire package” happen with “the money.”

I don’t know that Kaine has said he will raise taxes and fund everything; he probably hasn’t and he probably won’t because he’s running a “wink and nod” campaign. He just winked at the Roanoke Times editorial board and they nodded.

Commonwealth Conservative is hosting “Carnival of the Vanities,” a rotating blog spotlight that has been running for over two years. If you’re interested in the breadth and depth of the national blogosphere, this is a great place to browse.

Hosting the Carnival is quite a coup for John Behan and he uses his role of master of ceremonies to provide visitors with a very nice introduction to Virginia bloggers.

Edward L. Ayers, dean of the college of arts and sciences at the University of Virginia, is wrestling with the same questions raised recently on this blog regarding the cost and accessibility of higher education. (See his essay, “Flagship universities must pursue excellence and access.”)

The money graph: “We face a dilemma. Because they are so good, public flagship universities are attractive to students; that has enabled them to be highly selective, which in turn has raised them in national college rankings. The more good students who want to come, the better those rankings; the more good students who are turned away, the better still. Public universities brag about the median SAT scores, high-school standing, and GPA’s of their students, just as private colleges do. They have built impressive graduation and retention rates by bringing in students who are likely to stay and to graduate.”

The solution? “The University of Virginia has begun AccessUVa, a program that makes our university free for any qualified applicant whose family’s income is up to 200 percent of the poverty level (or, right now, $37,700 for a family of four). We have also promised that no one will leave U.Va. owing more than a quarter of the four-year cost of attendance for in-state students.”

Few appreciate more than we, the humor, wit and perspective of The Post editorial cartoonist Tom Toles.

Imagine our shock to see him demonstrate a bad case of Geographic Illiteracy on today’s editorial page. As luck would have it, we were in our doctors office for an early AM physical when we saw the cartoon and so medical aide was close at hand for us. No word on Toles location or condition. We know Tole’s heart is in the right place but spreading Geographic Illiteracy in cartoons is serious, very serious.

For the record when we look at the “Military Moves” map in Monday’s Business section this is what we see: The four locations with three or more buildings to be “possibly effected” are all in Beta Villages which have too many jobs and too few houses, services, recreation and amenity to make a balanced contribution to their communities. (Ballston and Rosslyn in Greater North Arlington, Crystal City in Greater South Arlington, Carlyle/West End in Greater Alexandria and Mark Center in Greater Baileys Crossroads.)

When we look at the map of the primary potential relocation site in Virginia we see Fort Belvoir in Greater Lorton at R=17 Miles from the centroid of the Subregion. If you look at a 1958 (sic) Comprehensive Plan for Fairfax County you will find Greater Lorton is designated a Planned New Community (aka, a Balanced Community). Almost 50 years of unintelligent planning, implementation and investment (public and private) has nearly buried the potential but it is still there.

Municipal, state and federal governance practitioners who are calling for a federal contribution to make Greater Lorton into a Balanced Community if there is a relocation of federal jobs to Fort Belvoir are right on target. It is a shame there are not regional and subregional strategies and plans in place for this rational relocation.

The Fundamental Change necessary to create the Fuller/Florida prosperous future outlined in the discussion of Fairfax County in our “Antidotes” column requires these regional and subregional strategies/plans, not unilateral military realignment.

We also need to be sure Tom Toles gets an antidote for that virus before it spreads.

EMR

The Virginia Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission has completed the sale of bonds backed by a portion of the state’s tobacco-settlement money. The sale will raise $448 million, of which $390 million will be placed in an endowment to finance economic development in Virginia’s Southside and Southwest Virginia tobacco-growing communities.

The bond sale comes on the heels of the recently announced sale of the Danville Regional Medical Center. About $200 million from that transaction will endow a community foundation for the Danville-Pittsylvania area. And let us not forget the Harvest Foundation, endowed with $150 million in 2002 from the sale of the old Martinsville Memorial Hospital.

Virginia’s southern piedmont is well endowed, it seems, to reinvent itself for the 21st century.

Most major national events have a Virginia connection. The Supreme Court’s decision yesterday to strike down discrimination in direct shipments of wine is yet another example.

The Washington Post has a nice profile of Juanita Swedenburg, the Middleburg winery owner who convinced Clint Bolick, counsel for the Institute of Justice, to take the case.

Virginia is not one of the states with restrictive laws and wineries in the Old Dominion should benefit from the ruling. Rick Sincere has complete coverage.

Del. Bill Carrico, R-Fries, spent several hours recently manning the desk at a state rest stop on I-81.

Many politicians in other states get a lot of mileage out of taking a “citizen’s job” for a day. Since Virginia already has a “citizen legislature,” you don’t see what Del. Carrico did very often.

It’s a gimmick and a calculated photo-op, but maybe Virginia politicians ought to do more of it, especially if they make the time by skipping receptions and golf outings sponsored by lobbyists.

Steve. H. Chapman, the 27-year-old challenger to Harry Parrish for the 50th House of Delegates seat, concedes that his opponent may have had nothing to do with misdemeanor charges filed against him for letting his dog run loose eight months ago, the Manassas Journal Messenger has reported. The dog, named Nixon, was killed after escaping from Chapman’s yard last August, but he wasn’t served papers for letting his dog run at large until April, prompting speculation that the charges may have been politically motivated.

However, officers had tried to serve Chapman at his Dale City home five times before they were successful April 20, Prince William County Police Chief Charlie T. Deane wrote in a letter of clarification released Monday. Police denied any political motivation. “I don’t think anyone knew who he was,” said spokesperson 1st Sgt. Kim Chinn, according to the Journal Messenger.

It also turns out that the loose-dog incident was not an isolated one. Chapman was charged twice before with the same offense: Once in March 2000 and again in June 2004, the Journal Messenger stated. Chapman’s police record also includes four speeding tickets and four seatbelt violations since 1996. “When you drive 30,000 miles a year,” said Chapman, who runs a power wash business, “occasionally you’ll get stopped.” But that’s not all. In 1999, Chapman’s driver’s license was suspended because he failed to pay fines and court costs of $80. Later that year, he was charged with driving without an opertor’s license.

With all these revelations, it’s looking pretty hard for Chapman to make the case that he was the victim of hardball politics when charged with lying about his residency in the 50th House district while registering to vote last year. In earlier posts, I was sympathetic to his plight. Given his track record, I’m thinking he sounds like a young man in way too much of a hurry.

The Kilgore campaign is rolling out its first two television campaign ads. Entitled “Experience” and “Education”, the ads will run on a rotating schedule beginning this week. The first ad touts Kilgore’s experience “to take a stand on the tough issues.” The second pushes his proposal to provide better pay to recruit better teachers.

View “Experience.”

View “Education.”

Despite highly publicized measures by elite universities to increase financial aid, access to higher education for lower income families is eroding, charge Robert B. Archibald and David H. Feldman, two William and Mary economists who have contributed on occasion to Bacon’s Rebellion. Driven by the imperative to increase their standings in the U.S. News & World-Report annual ranking of colleges and universities, institutions of higher education are competing for top students by increasing the dispensation of financial aid on the basis of merit, crowding out aid made available to students on the basis of need.

Over the past 10 years, the share of state grant aid that is not based on need has risen from just under 10 percent to over 23 percent, Archibald and Feldman write in the Baltimore Sun. “The shift toward merit aid is troubling because it doesn’t increase the number of qualified students who receive a higher education. … Merit aid’s primary effect is to concentrate talent at schools with deeper pockets.”

With tuitions at regional institutions rising at the rate of 6 percent to 10 percent a year, less affluent students are getting priced out of the educational marketplace. According to a June 2002 report by the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, financial barriers will shut off access to college for more than 2 million high school graduates from low- and moderate-income families — despite, I might add, a strong ideological commitment on the part of university administrations to economic and ethnic diversity. At the root of the problem: Colleges and universities are not driven by the profit motive — they’re driven by the prestige motive. And the average SAT score of the entering freshman class is one of the key metrics colleges use to gauge their relative status.

That’s only one of the reasons that inflation in college tuitions are out of control. As I noted in my column, “Tuition Trauma” (April 25, 2005), colleges also compete for the most prestigious professors, especially scientists who bring in research grants, by building expensive laboratories and providing financial support for graduate student/research assistants. We Virginians share in the prestige and benefit from the economic development that comes with having world-class universities in the state. But we’ve got to find some way to bring costs under control and make college tuitions affordable.

I am pleased to announce that Phil Rodokanakis, a regular Bacon’s Rebellion columnist and frequent contributor to this blog, has been elected president of the Virginia Club for Growth. Said Club Chairman Paul Jost: “Phil’s election recognizes his many years of involvement as a grassroots activist. He is widely recognized as a leader who has worked tirelessly in Virginia for many years promoting economic growth through limited government and lower taxes.”

Phil replaces Peter Ferrara, who is now working with Free Enterprise Fund as director of the Social Security Project leading the fight to establish individual private accounts.

Congratulations, Phil. Bacon’s Rebellion readers know you for your combative idealism. Soon, no doubt, the rest of Virginia will, too.

Tayloe Murphy, Virginia’s Secretary of Conservation and Natural Resources, wove together some interesting threads in a speech delivered to the Environment Virginia Conference in April and republished Sunday in the Daily Press. Environmentalists, we take forgranted, elevate the protection of the Chesapeake Bay watershed to the top of their list of concerns. But environmentalists, he argues, should find common cause with economic developers and faith communities.

The Chesapeake Bay, once one of the most bountiful estuaries on the planet, has been assaulted by decades of abuse. Although the “point” pollution caused by industry has largely abated, the “nonpoint” pollution generated by everything from auto emissions and loss of wetlands to industrial-scale agriculture and pesticide/fertilizer runoff, remains rampant.

A lifelong resident of the Northern Neck before moving to Richmond to work for the Warner administration, Murphy laments the loss of jobs in rural Bay counties that has accompanied the devastation of the marine population in the Bay. “It deeply saddens me,” he wrote, “to ride by one abandoned oyster shucking house after another – by lifeless crab picking facilities that today stand empty – all monuments to a once thriving commercial seafood industry that no longer exists because we placed on that industry the cost of our failure to keep its workplace clean and healthy.”

Restoring the bounty of the Bay could revitalize the local seafood industry, Murphy implies, providing a living for inhabitants who now commute great distances to find work. Furthermore, “quality of life” issues are increasingly a driving force in economic development. If I might be permitted to elaborate upon Murphy’s ideas a little, I would add that, as Northern Virginia, Richmond and Hampton Roads compete to attract and retain the creative class that disproportionately contributes to economic prosperity, the recreational opportunities offered by the Bay and its tributaries become a vital asset…. but only if they have clean water, vibrant wildlife and protected public spaces.

Murphy closes his speech by noting the spiritual dimension of protecting the environment. He quotes from the Episcopalian Book of Common Prayer: “We give you thanks, most gracious God, for the beauty of the earth and sky and sea; for the richness of mountains, plains, and rivers; for the songs of birds and the loveliness of flowers. We praise you for these good gifts and pray that we may safeguard them for our posterity. Grant that we may continue to grow in our grateful enjoyment of your abundant creation.”

“Increasingly,” Murphy closes hopefully, “Virginians understand that conservation adds to their wealth, their happiness, their physical and spiritual health, and the well-being of their families, friends and neighbors.” (Thanks to Barnie Day for bringing this to my attention.)

What a shock: “Pentagon Plans to Close 180 Sites, Shift Area Jobs to Outer Suburbs” is today’s five column headline in The Washington Post.

And I thought I read the base closing list with some care yesterday…

Never fear. Turn to page 11 and get out your compass. All the “Gain” symbols are within R=20 Miles of the centroid of the Baltimore or the National Capital Subregions, within R=5 Miles of the centroid of urban agglomerations (e.g. Frederick, MD) or are big enough places (e.g. Quantico/East Prince William) to become Balanced Communities. These are just the places where one would expect them.

This is not putting the Department of the Army in Culpeper or even the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (think what they could do to help cure Geographic Literacy) in West Prince William.

This is exactly the sort of media distortion that generates and perpetuates Geographic Illiteracy and the illusion of jobs scattering to the fringes.

Also think how great a story it would be if the Pentagon had said they were going to use the clout of base realignment to create Balanced Communities. Sounds like a column to me.

EMR