Bacon's Rebellion

Many bloggers exist to serve as a counterpoint to the “mainstream media.” It has always surprised me how few of them take advantage of the opportunity to directly ask questions of the reporters and pundits they criticize.

The Washington Post frequently has reporters, commentators, and newsmakers taking questions online. Today the Virginian-Pilot will have General Assembly reporters Warren Fiske and Christina Nuckols taking questions at noon.

For once, I’m on the road and will miss the festivities. Wonder if anyone will ask about the “crack” bill?

This morning, I read this ditty about Senator Creigh Deed from George Loper’s Charlottesville web site and have attached the latest Equality Virginia press release as well.



Any thoughts, or comments, or bacon bits?



Per Loper email: In May of 2004 Creigh blasted GOP legislators for a “mean-spirited and unnecessary” bill banning gay marriage and legal contracts between unmarried partners.” At the time, he was reported as opposing gay marriage and supporting a different version of the Senate bill, to which Warner added amendments limiting its impact on legal contracts. See http://george.loper.org/~george/archives/2004/May/979.html

On February 7 of 2005 Creigh voted for a constitutional amendment [SJ337] stating:

“That only a union between one man and one woman may be a marriage valid in or recognized by this Commonwealth and its political subdivisions. This Commonwealth and its political subdivisions shall not create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals that intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance, or effect of marriage.”

Voting yea were: Bell, Blevins, Bolling, Chichester, Colgan, Cuccinelli, Deeds, Devolites Davis, Hanger, Hawkins, Houck, Martin, Miller, Mims, Newman, Norment, Obenshain, O’Brien, Potts, Puckett, Quayle, Rerras, Reynolds, Ruff, Stolle, Stosch, Wagner, Wampler, Watkins, Williams – 30.

Voting nay were: Edwards, Howell, Lambert, Locke, Lucas, Marsh, Puller, Saslaw, Ticer, Whipple – 10.



Asked about his position on SJ337, he said:

“I believe marriage is uniquely a matter of state law and that marriage is the union between one man and one woman.”

“In committee, I voted for an amendment to take out the second sentence of the amendment,” but was outvoted. He said his objection to the second sentence was that “it takes the peoples’ branch of government out of consideration about whether contracts are similar to marriage and throws it into the courts.”



When it came before the floor, he said he “had to make a decision” and “wanted people to have a choice.”

Assuming that the bill is passed, it will have to go before a second session of the Virginia General Assembly in 2006, before going to the ballot as a voter referendum.



Please send your thoughts about Creigh’s vote to [email protected] where the most representative comments will be placed on my web site with full attribution.

Given the fact that the amendment will probably come again before the Virginia General Assembly and also the fact that Creigh is running for AG, you might want to drop him a line yourself. His email address is [email protected] His phone number at the VA Gen Assembly is 804-698-7525.





Per Equality Virginia Press Release: EV NewsFebruary 9, 2005

Virginia’s New #1 Ranking: Most Anti-Gay State in Nation?



(Richmond, Virginia) Virginia moved farther along the path to becoming the most anti-gay state in the nation as the 2005 General Assembly arrived at the mid-point of the legislative session.

Proposals to constitutionalize a ban on same sex marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships have powered through both houses of the legislature on lop-sided votes. Other legislation that would have made Virginia only the second state to prohibit “homosexuals” from adopting children and directed local school officials to ban student organizations that provide support to gay and lesbian teens have been modified in the legislative process but are still under consideration.

“Virginia has real problems to fix, like growing traffic congestion, the health care crisis, job losses in Southwest and Southside Virginia and underperforming schools. It’s shameful that our legislators have spent their time this session fiddling with the constitution, and otherwise being quite creative in attempting to deny tax-paying gay and lesbian Virginians equal protection under the law. This is the worst case of ‘piling on’ seen in decades,” said Dyana Mason, Equality Virginia Executive Director. “It’s obvious that our opponents feel threatened by the progress made towards equality in recent years, here and around the country.”

Virginia has had a law banning same sex marriage since 1986, which has been strengthened twice since, most recently with the passage of HB 751 passed just last year. There has never been a case in which Virginia’s definition of marriage has been challenged. Despite this fact, legislative sponsors argue that there is an urgent need to act to change the constitution to protect Virginia’s definition of marriage from some unspecified threat posed by judges in Massachusetts and California.

“This argument shows how little moral force there is behind the arguments of marriage amendment proponents. The reality is that any threat to Virginia’s definition of marriage is posed, not by unknown rogue judges or gay and lesbian Virginians seeking to forge recognized, committed relationships, but by other factors, such as poverty, lack of commitment to stated religious and moral vows, and the divorce rate,” said Equality Virginia Board Chair, Joseph R. Price.

Prior to the start of the session, Equality Virginia hired a professional lobbyist, started organizing grassroots Community Action Teams in districts across the state, and organized the largest ever gay and lesbian Lobby Day attended by over 250 volunteer activists. The growing strength of Equality Virginia and its supporters has already had an impact this session and is reflected in the changes made to moderate the proposed adoption and Gay Straight Alliance bills.

Equality Virginia and allied groups are also currently organizing a set of community meetings statewide to update our members and supporters on the actions taken by the General Assembly, and encourage them to get involved.

“We will continue to bring to bear on the legislative process the collective power of Equality Virginia and our allies, Virginians of reason and faith, who oppose discrimination in all of its forms,” said David Lampo, Chair of the Political Committee of Equality Virginia.

-30-

Here’s my second morning NPR post in a row … Mickey Kaus in Slate was listening:

Here’s how NPR’s All Things Considered covered President Bush’s proposed cuts in Community Development Block Grants–by lobbing softballs to a CDBG supporter! No opposing view. … This is not just liberal, but dumb liberal–NPR could easily have found a Democrat, maybe even an old Democrat, who believed CDBGs are an ineffective antipoverty program. (Basically they are slush funds for local politicians, who too often sluice the federal money to their developer friends to build ugly downtown hotels.)

It’s my sense that in Virginia, the CDBG program is used extensively in rural areas and, on the whole, has done some good. Maybe someone knows of CDBG funds used in Virginia as Mickey describes. I hope not, but, if so, it looks like there won’t be as much of that in the future.

On the charter bill…

Doesn’t look anything like it did in the beginning. Now called ‘The Restructured Higher Education Administrative and Financial Operations Act of 2005.’ The longer version of this bill is…well…long. Here’s the short take: all the schools are in, all will remain state agencies. A three-tiered relationship is set out…sort of like the Mary Kay cosmetics business plan. If you reach the top, I suppose you’ll get a pink Cadillac. Or whatever. There will be different levels of ‘freedom’ from state interference and expectations on both sides of the relationship are in writing at each level. Here’s the thing of significance: for the first time ever, the Code of Virginia will spell out its expectations for higher education! That’s a big one. Bill numbers are HB 2866 and SB 1327. Look’em up. Read all about it.

On Kilgore…

Refusing an invitation yesterday to meet with the leadership of the Virginia AFL-CIO. Says they’re partisan. Excuse me. I didn’t realize we’d taken partisanship out of politics.

Speaking of partisanship…

My appointment to the tobacco commission cleared P&E 21-0 yesterday. On second reading today. Floor vote Friday. Remarkable turn. My appreciation to every single member. Republicans who went hard to bat: Dick Black, Bob Marshall, Riley Ingram, Jim Dillard. Probably others. You all understand that there is absolutely no quid pro quo here. But I am appreciative.

And in sports…

Does it get any better and Duke and Carolina basketball? Always conflicted when they play each other. Love’em both. Last night it was the Dookies, 71-70 in another classic.

Well, it’s official now. George Fitch has officially declared his candidacy for the Republican nomination for governor. If crime were an overriding issue, I might give Jerry Kilgore some thought. But, let’s face it, it’s not. To my mind, the overriding issues facing Virginia are figuring out how to provide core services without raising taxes. And that requires two things: reforming government processes and changing land use patterns.

I am not privy to George Fitch’s thinking in any detail, but my understanding is that he has done a creditable job with the first (efficiency in government) as mayor of Warrenton, and has at least a passing awareness of the issues pertaining to the second. My impression of Kilgore is that he’s a nice enough guy but is utterly conventional in his thinking.

While Fitch seems a long shot for the nomination, I’m hoping he can stimulate some fresh ideas in the GOP…. which sorely needs them.

Please, on behalf of plumbers everywhere, contact your legislator immediately and urge adoption of a ‘crack’ amendment exempting plumbers from the underwear bill. 90% percent of them will be in violation of the law if this bill is not amended.

Earth & Sky, a program that airs on NPR, featured a Virginia Tech chemist this morning. Karen Brewer is working to develop a hydrogen generation system “that’s energy efficient, inexpensive, clean and renewable.” Wonder what she thought of Larry Summer’s remarks on women and science ….

Maybe some day we’ll be stuck in traffic in hydrogen-powered cars.

Does Jerry Kilgore, by naming Gilmore–an avowed future candidate–a co-chairman of his campaign, beholden himself to Gilmore down the road? How does he not do that? What does that say to his down-ticket friends? To Bolling? To McDonnell? Did Gilmore condition his support on the sell-out?

I don’t know how valid the results of this study are, but a telephone survey of 10,000 Virginians conducted by Auburne University Montgomery’s Center for Government found the following: “26% of command and line officers and 43% of citizens surveyed reported that bias-based policing was practiced in Virginia.”

The study, underwritten by the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services, can be viewed here.

Joel Kotkin, a prolific author and namer of trends in human settlement patterns (e.g. “white flight”), has written a new book. Kotkin’s latest idea–the dominance of “suburbia”–is trumpeted by the headline of the lead story in the Outlook section of Sunday’s The Washington Post: “Rule, Suburbia: The Verdict’s In. We Love It There.” The first paragraph punchline: “The Winner is, yes, sprawl” sells books but it masks reality.

Without reading another word or understanding anything about what Kotkin is actually describing, thousands who saw the headline will smile to themselves knowingly. Even those who read the opinion piece or Kotkin’s new book, to say nothing of the millions who never heard of Joel Kotkin, will continue to assume that the human settlement pattern that has agglomerated over the past 80 years is just fine. Many concerned about the impact of dysfunctional human settlement patterns will think Kotkin’s “research” means that “we did the best (or only) thing we could.” Citizens and organizations will believe and act as if it is in their best interest to continue to make the same ill-advised location decisions they have been making for decades.

What is most amazing is how little of what Kotkin has to say is related to what readers think he is talking about. Kotkin tries to describe in broad strokes and witty prose what many would agree is happening within urban areas of the United States. The problem is neither Kotkin nor his readers have a conceptual framework or vocabulary sufficiently robust to describe or understand the process much less help citizens or their organizations support a rational future course of action. Without this framework and vocabulary Kotkin warps the important historical landmarks like Ebenezer Howard’s “Garden City” movement. He also misinterprets most of what he sees in the United States and in urban areas world-wide.

Aristotle, who was trained in medicine and natural science, noted over 2,330 years ago that human settlement patterns are organic systems. Since at least the Renaissance there has been no serious dispute about this fact. Yet there is not single source of data or observation cited by Kotkin that is not completely oblivious to what the fact that human settlement patterns are organic systems means.

A large forest does not grow by the largest tree in the center of the forest getting bigger and bigger. The forest expands through the growth of organic subsystems. When nutrients (citizens and money) are fed into a regional settlement pattern it grows the same way. What has not changed over the past 80 years in the organic system we call the National Capital Subregion (or in the Greater Richmond or Hampton Roads New Urban Regions) are the municipal boundaries. What were areas at the fringe of the urban system 80 or even 30 years ago are now within the logical location of a Clear Edge. These areas are subject to enormous growth pressures in all prosperous New Urban Regions.

Due to the ossification of municipal boundaries what was once confusingly labeled “suburban” is now very clearly “urban.” The studies, sources and observations that Kotkin cites still call these places “suburban.” That is like calling NFL players toddlers because 20 or 30 years ago they were toddlers.

One needs to look up the definition of “suburban” in the Oxford Unabridged Dictionary to understand that this word of 15th and 16th century origin and to understand that silly definitives such as “suburbia” is a source of mass confusion in 2005.

The photos used in The Post opinion piece to describe what is happening in “suburbia” are of Bethesda. Bethesda and Tysons Corner are not in Carroll or Fauquier Counties. They are within Radius = 10 miles of the core of the National Capital Subregion, just were you would expect urban growth to be taking place. This is true for vast majority of examples Kotkin cites.

Within 10 miles of the centroid of the National Capital Subregion (or any other urban settlement) there are 200,000 acres. Within 40 miles of the centroid that reaches places like Carroll and Fauquier there are 3,217,000 acres. What is happening at Radius = 10 miles R=10) is used to excuse what is happening from R=30 to R=100. (See “Scatteration,” 25 September 2003 at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com )

Of course technology has impact on the patterns of settlement. But technology has not modified human genes. That is why the market for built space shows that, at the unit, dooryard, cluster, neighborhood and village scales, the areas with the highest values per square foot are remarkably similar whether originally built in 1700, 1900 or 2005. (See “Wild Abandonment,” 8 September 2003 at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com)

The gross scatteration that Kotkin and others call “sprawl” represents a small percentage of the urban land uses. They are primarily urban dwellings and they are there because of counterproductive subsidies (See Bacons Rebellion Blog posting of 7 Feb 2005 on Affordable and Accessible Housing) and the failure to equitably distribute location variable costs of goods and services.

Geological Illiteracy and dysfunctional human settlement patterns are fostered and maintained, not just by the headlines and photos but by all the authors and agencies who refuse to understand the organic nature of human settlement patterns.

EMR

I don’t see much merit in amending the state Constitution to ban same-sex marriage, as the state Senate voted 30 to 10 yesterday to do, but after reading Tyler Whitney’s account in this morning’s Richmond Times-Dispatch, I’m almost ready to endorse the darn thing out of pure contrariness.

Said Sen. Mamie Locke, D-Hampton: “It is xenophobia that led to the rise of Nazism in Germany and fascism in Italy. It is homophobia that brings us to this place in time today.”

Said Janet D. Howell, D-Reston: The Nazis ordered the Jews in concentration camps to wear yellow patches and gays to wear pink patches. “In Virginia today, we do not require pink triangles. We stigmatize and marginalize people in other ways, as we go down a path that we don’t know where it will end.”

In other words, passing an amendment that would deny gays the right to marry — a right that they’ve never possessed in any culture since the dawn of time — is the moral equivalent of fascism and Nazism, and only a short slide down the slippery slope to tossing gays into concentration camps. I’m sorry, that’s not an argument. It’s name calling.

Far more persuasive was Sen. Richard L. Saslaw, D-Fairfax: If senators were really interested in protecting marriage, they’d address the high rate of divorce. “It’s not what gay people are doing to marriage, it’s us.”

The House version of the budget cut some of Gov. Warner’s proposed spending on economic development for Southside and Southwest. This Roanoke Times editorial assigns blame:

Then there’s the “I got mine, Jack, and I want more” attitude among some legislators from thriving areas. Riding high on technology, services and federal spending, and with unemployment rates as low as 2 percent, they’re far more concerned with passing new tax cuts than helping to revive less-fortunate regions where joblessness runs as high as 14 percent.

They are not their country cousins’ keepers.

The Times editors call Warner’s “Virginia Works” proposals “promising, proven and often business-approved development tactics.”

If I’m not mistaken, this week Gov. Warner will make two more in what has become a series of positive economic development announcements for Southside and Southwest. Somehow, existing economic development organizations and programs appear to be doing pretty well.

A few months ago Gov. Warner appointed me to the Virginia tobacco commission to fill the unexpired term of former Virginia Attorney General Mary Sue Terry, who resigned for business-related personal reasons. Like many of the thousands of appointments made by Virginia governors, this one is subject to confirmation by the Virginia General Assembly. Typically, these appointments go off without a hitch and are so routine as to seem automatic. But not this time. This morning I received a call from a Republican member of the House P&E committee (Privleges and Elections) alerting me to the fact that my appointment would, in all likelyhood, not be recommended by P&E to the full House for confirmation, in pure retribution for opinions I frequently express in a regular column I write for Bacon’s Rebellion and several other outlets around the state. The suggestion was later made that I may salvage this confirmation by appealing to House Majority Leader Morgan Griffith and to Speaker Bill Howell. This I declined to do. In an effort to spare Gov. Warner any heartburn or embarassment, I did express to his office a willingness for my name to be simply withdrawn. Governor Warner declined. The vote at committee level was scheduled for today, but was postponed until tomorrow. I don’t know what will happen. I am the first to admit, to even insist, that House members have every right to deny this confirmation. This is hardball politics, a game wherein no quarter is given, and none asked, something of a cross between bear-baiting and hockey without the helmets. I have dished it out enough. I sure as hell can take it. I even admire the straight-faced glee with which some of them play it. Despite our wonderful divergence of views from time to time, I hold each of you in the very highest personal regard, count myself lucky and privileged to be your colleague, and would in no way ever intentionally bring dishonor to you–by association–or otherwise.

Ever wonder why there is not enough affordable housing in functional locations? (At S/PI we call this housing “affordable and accessible.”) For an important part of the answer look no farther that the federal subsidy for the very rich.

According to the bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation the federal direct subsidy to homeowners is now $116 billion per year. That is up from the $100 billion that we estimated at the time The Shape of the Future was completed. We noted in 2000 that the vast majority of the subsidy goes to those at the top of the economic food chain.

There has been no change in the last half-decade. The top ½ of 1 percent of those filing for federal housing subsidy receive 22% of the benefit. At the bottom, 10% of the tax payers get only 4% of the benefit. Those are the ones that need help. So do most of the 30% of the households who do not own a house and so do not qualify for any meaningful subsidy.

According to columnist Kenneth R. Harney, the current administration has taken these subsides “off the table” for code writers who are trying to “streamline” of the IRS code. The 2006 “more-money-for-Iraq” budget removes those wasteful subsides of the less well to do such as the dismantled “community” programs.

Like the indirect subsidies from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and others, the direct tax subsidies on shelter go, by-in-large, to support houses that are the wrong size and in the wrong location. (“Affordable But No Bargain,” 15 June 2001 and “The Housing Dilemma,” 14 July 2003 at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com )

The Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections defeated SB1072, a bill proposed by Sen. Ken Cuccinelli. It called for a voter referendum on the question “Shall the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors be prohibited from committing or appropriating County revenues and funds to the Dulles Corridor Rapid Transit Project?” (AKA Rail to Dulles)

Many have called Rail-to-Dulles a boondoggle. (See my Dec. 2003 column “The Rail-to-Dulles Scam.”) It’s no wonder that most politicians don’t want the voters to have a choice on whether to fund this project or not. Were the truth about this scheme to bilk billions from an unsuspecting public to come out, the voters would certainly defeat it–if only they were given a chance to vote.

In the meantime the conniving continues. The next step to promoting this scheme is to raise the tolls on the Dulles Toll Road. Commuters on the Toll Road will have the privilege of paying 70% higher tolls if the Commonwealth Transportation Board has its way—tolls that will be diverted from the Toll Road to line up the pockets of the big money contributors of the legislators that are supporting this boondoggle.