Bacon's Rebellion

Del. Bob Marshall, R-Manassas, and the American Tradition Institute (ATI) won a circuit court order Tuesday ordering the University of Virginia to disgorge emails and other communications sent and received by Dr. Michael Mann, creator of the infamous “hockey stick” graph. The graph, which purported to show a dramatic spike in global temperatures in the late 20th century, provided vivid confirmation of the fears of many scientists that Global Warming is a real and accelerating phenomenon.

Mann was one of the key players involved in the East Anglia Climate Research Unit scandal that did so much to discredit Global Warming alarmism a couple of years ago by showing how a small cadre of scientists manipulated data and used their clout to stifle opposing viewpoints from the U.N.’s supposedly definitive Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. Now, Global Warming skeptics are hoping that Mann’s correspondence during his time as an environmental science professor at UVa will yield more embarrassing revelations.

As ATI noted in its press release, “There … already appears — from records AT has received — to be additional information of the kind released in the ‘Climategate’ emails that originated from the Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia University.”

UVa had stonewalled the release of the records for months, at one point denying that they even existed, and later insisting that ATI be charged in excess of $8,000 for copying and reproduction charges. The university also fought a parallel probe by Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli to gain access to the records in an investigation of possible fraud on Mann’s part in the use of state research funds.

As of yesterday, ATI had received one fifth of the 9,000 pages that UVA says are responsive to ATI’s request. Most of what ATI has received so far is junk: “ads for Halloween costumes, public news releases from lay and scientific journals, and a few emails that were printed in computer code so as to be unintelligible in that form.” However, some material made it through UVa’s “filter,” stated ATI, which the institute will reveal to the public in the future.

UVa has done itself no favors by its conduct in this matter. I am somewhat sympathetic to the university’s decision to fight Cuccinelli’s probe, which could be viewed as a politically motivated fishing expedition on the spurious grounds that Mann might have committed fraud in his use of state research funds. As sympathetic as I am to those who wish to expose Mann for committing intellectual fraud, not criminal fraud, I did fret that Cuccinelli’s action set a dangerous precedent for politicizing and criminalizing academic discourse.

But releasing emails under Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act is a very different matter. The ATI is a private institute seeking information of a type that the University had released previously — specifically, the emails of Patrick Michaels, a Global Warming skeptic, under an FOIA request from a leftist group. The data will not be used to criminalize Mann but to expose any machinations in stifling opposing academic views that he might have been engaged in. Justice will be served, and it will be served in a way that does not involve the Attorney General’s office, which has no business being involved in a dispute of this nature.

Now, I can only hope that UVa, my alma mater, does not become discredited by the ClimateGate scandal in the same way that East Anglia University in the United Kingdom has been. If administrators had simply handed over the emails, as they did in Michaels’ case, they would have avoided any taint if the emails contained scandalous content. But by trying to hush potential revelations, administrators will be seen as complicit with Mann and will be tarred along with him.

Reforming Virginia Health Care
The Virginia Newsletter
Federal health care reform will have a big impact on Virginia by 2014. Here’s what the state is doing to get ready for it.

Reform the Healthcare Payments System
Brookings Institution
It is possible to tame rising healthcare costs without sacrificing quality: Change the payments system from a fee-for-service arrangement to one that rewards positive outcomes and incentivizes patients to seek health plans that offer value.

The Funding of State and Local Pensions
Center for Retirement Research
Funding of state pension plans continued to deteriorate in 2010: The ratio of assets to liabilities fell to 77% and states made only 78% of needed payments. Meanwhile, states are making optimistic assumptions about future investment performance on existing assets.

Asians in Virginia
Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service
As of 2010, Asians constituted 5.5% of Virginia’s populations. Asians are prospering here. Better educated than native-born citizens, they earn considerably more.

U.S. Immigration Courts: An Exercise in Futility
Center for Immigration Studies
Federal immigration courts are a joke. Millions of immigrants never show up for trial. Judges are powerless. Unenforced removal orders now exceed 1.1 million.

Immigrants to the United States from Canada and the Philippines are the most assimilated of major immigrant groups, according to a new Manhattan Institute report, “Comparing Immigrant Assimilation in North America and Europe.” The report ranked populations based on measures of economic, cultural and civic assimilation.

For the most part, the United States does a better job of assimilating immigrants than Europe, notes the author Jacob L. Vigdor, although Canada does the best job of all. Assimilation rates also vary within the U.S. by metropolitan area.

Speaking of assimilating Asians, see the Weldon Cooper Center’s new statistical snapshot of the Asian population in Virginia. There are 400,000 Asians living in the state now, 5.5% of the population. Better educated than the native-born population, Asians also make significantly higher incomes.

Just how successful is Bob McDonnell at being the “Jobs Governor?”

Over at the Score, Norm Leahy continues his battle against incentives or, as he calls it, “corporate welfare” by subjecting a recent op-ed piece by Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling to withering scrutiny. Read the blog post.

There is so much to say on this topic, but I’ll let Norm carry the ball right now.

Cutting Women and Children First
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Proposed congressional cuts to the WIC nutrition program could deny benefits to between 325,000 and 475,000 eligible women, infants and children under five.

For what it’s worth: It appears that I can no longer post comments to my own blog. I get an “bX-rynfwe” message, whatever that is. Others who report that error message on Blogger’s forum appear to get no satisfaction. So, as much as I would like to respond to some comments, I am not able. Hopefully, the problem will go away as mysteriously as it appeared.

Update: Larry Gross has reported that he cannot post comments either.

Who is Dennis L. Martire? For all the controversy over cost overruns in the Metrorail-to-Dulles project, his name has barely figured in media accounts. But he is the central figure in the decision by the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) board to require a Project Labor Agreement (PLA) for Phase 2 of the multibillion-dollar construction project — a decision, critics say, that could add $300 million or more to the construction tab for the rail line.

Martire, appointed to the MWAA board by Gov. Tim Kaine, is vice president and Mid-Atlantic Regional Manager of the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA). Working out of an office in Reston, he runs a division that represents construction workers from Virginia to Pennsylvania. In line with official LiUNA policy, he also has been an active advocate of Project Labor Agreements (PLAs) for major construction projects.

Under a PLA, the owner of a major capital project typically requires contractors to hire their workers from union hiring halls, contribute to union pensions, hire apprentices from union apprenticeship programs and abide by other measures that give union contractors an enormous advantage in the bidding process.

Here’s the timeline: In 2006, then-Gov. Tim Kaine transferred authority for managing the Metrorail-to-Dulles project, along with the Dulles Toll Road, to MWAA. Three years later, in 2009, he announced the appointment of Martire to the MWAA board for a six-year term. At that time, Martire was a public advocate for PLAs, as evidenced in this document published in 2008. After joining the board, Martire became chairman of the Planning and Construction Committee.

On April 6, 2011, the full MWAA board passed a resolution 11 to 2 requiring an estimated $2.5 billion to $3.5 billion worth of construction work on Phase 2 of Metrorail-to-Dulles to be subject to a PLA. One of the primary beneficiaries of the PLA likely will be LiUNA, Martire’s labor union, which represents lower-skilled laborers in big commercial construction jobs. LiUNA likely will collect hundreds of thousands or more in union dues as a direct result of the decision, and contractors and subs likely will pay millions of dollars into LiUNA’s union benefit plans.

Final details of the PLA have not been published yet, however, and may not be until the RFP is released for bids, so it is impossible to know for sure what the document will require, says Ben Brubeck, director of labor and federal affairs for Associated Builders & Contractors, which has protested the PLA. Phase 1 of the Metrorail-to-Dulles project, which is currently under construction, is operating under a PLA agreement, which prime contractor Bechtel voluntarily entered into. But that agreement exempts “merit shop” (non-union) sub-contractors from its provisions. A draft of the Phase 2 PLA would would make the agreement mandatory, and it would provide no exemption for sub-contractors, Brubeck says. With those two provisions, the second PLA will be more pro-labor than the first — a remarkable union accomplishment in a Right to Work state.

So, how did Matire come to Gov. Kaine’s attention? Why would the governor appoint someone with such an obvious vested interest to the MWAA board? Only Kaine can answer that last question with any certainty, but LiUNA’s track record as one of the biggest contributors to the Virginia Democratic Party surely entered into the calculus.

According to the Virginia Public Access Project, the Laborers Mid-Atlantic Regional Organizing Coalition has donated $419,050 to candidates and political action committees since 2007 — overwhelmingly to Democratic candidates. Creigh Deeds, unsuccessful candidate for governor, scooped up $250,000. Moving Virginia Forward, Tim Kaine’s PAC, garnered $55,000. The Laborers International Union of North America kicked in another $200,000 to the Democratic Party of Virginia in 2008,

Gov. Kaine, some may remember, wanted to appoint Danny LeBlanc, former chief of the Virginia AFL-CIO, to a cabinet-level position in his administration but was stymied by General Assembly Republicans who feared that the labor leader might undermine the state’s Right to Work law. Little did anyone imagine that Kaine would appoint Martire to MWAA or what the consequences would be. When Kaine announced the appointment, it seemed so routine that no one made note of it at the time. Only now, long after Kaine departed office, is the bill coming due. If critics are right in supposing that the PLA will add $300 million or more in project costs — not including the interest on long-term bonds — the citizens of Northern Virginia will be paying the price for a long time to come.

Correction: I have amended this post to correct the statement that Martire’s appointment to chairman of MWAA’s Planning and Construction Committee “put him in a position to shepherd the PLA through the approval process.” In point of fact, the PLA worked its way through the Dulles Corridor Committee.

How to Get Effective Teachers in All Schools
Center for American Progress
The best teachers are distributed unevenly around the nation’s school systems. To reduce educational inequities, pay teachers more… and more equitably.

Evaluating Patient-Centered Medical Homes
The Urban Institute
Patient Centered Medical Homes (PCMHs) are an emerging model for medical care. Lots of pilot projects are underway around the country. How do you assess different PCMHs to see how well they’re working?

A “spatial mismatch” has emerged between the location of jobs and people in metropolitan America, argues a new Brookings Institution study, “Missed Opportunity: Transit and Jobs in Metropolitan America.”

In a study of 371 mass transit providers in the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas, the authors find that nearly 70% of the residents of large metro areas live in neighborhoods with access to transit service of some kind. However, the typical metropolitan resident can reach only 30% of the jobs in their market via transit within 90 minutes. Access is particularly limited in Richmond, somewhat less so in Hampton Roads and superior in metropolitan Washington, according to data in the study.

Transportation decision makers should make access to jobs an “explicit priority” in their spending and service decisions, the authors contend. “Metro leaders should coordinate strategies regarding land use, economic development and housing with transit decisions in order to ensure that transit reaches more people and more jobs efficiently.”

Conceptually, Virginia regions have two broad options for reducing the jobs-people mismatch: extend existing transit service to areas now lacking it, with the likely consequence that they will run up larger operating deficits… Or change comprehensive plans and zoning policies to encourage a better balance of jobs, housing and amenities within areas already served by mass transit, thus generating more ridership and reducing the need for operating subsidies.

Readers paying attention to Ed Risse’s call for “balanced” regions, communities and neighborhoods will immediately find this idea familiar. Ed’s critics deem the idea of achieving balance in more compact, walkable communities to be uncomfortably akin to social engineering. They forget, of course, that existing land use patterns are the result of social engineering as well, the difference being that social engineering since World War II has designed American communities around the goals of single-family home ownership and personal mobility by means of the automobile.

I am agnostic as to whether automobiles are preferable to mass transit. Public preferences will change depending upon (a) the cost of gasoline, (b) the cost of automobile ownership, (c) the cost and convenience of mass transit, and (d) the general level of prosperity, among other factors. In other words, preferences will change according to circumstance. There is no single solution for all places and all times.

How, then, do policy makers decide which is the best modal mix? They don’t. They let consumers make that decision — with one caveat, that they pay full locational costs associated with where they live and work. Roads and mass transit alike must pay their way through fares, tolls, user fees, and the capture of capture of increased property values created by the building of new transportation infrastructure. Create a level playing field and let the market decide. That’s not social engineering.

According to the Brookings ranking of access to transit and employment, the Washington metro area scores in the Top 20 of the nation’s 100 largest regions, Richmond in the bottom 20, and Hampton Roads in the second-to-bottom 20. (Click on map for more legible image.)

It might seem like a simple question: Is it hard to quit smoking tobacco?

For Philip Morris, past and present, it depends on what kind of barriers your corporate lawyers have erected.

To Louis C. Camilleri, CEO of Philip Morris International, now conveniently based in Switzerland, the answer is no. While smoking is addictive, he admitted, “it is not that hard to quit.” Camilleri made the statement at PMI’s annual meeting in New York.

Meanwhile, down in Richmond, at its annual meeting, Michael E. Szymancyk, CEO of Philip Morris USA, said that yes to both questions. “Because tobacco use is addictive and can be very difficult to quit, our tobacco companies help connect adult tobacco consumers who have decided to quit with cesssation information from public health authorities,” he told shareholders at Richmond’s convention center.

Confused by this Alice in Wonderland doubletalk from what was once the world’s greatest cigarette maker? It’s just one of many contradictions.

The two Philip Morris were split apart by corporate fiat and an army of corporate lawyers a few years back. The reason? The U.S. branch, now headquartered in Richmond, still makes cigarettes but tells you not to smoke them, yet it still makes a tidy profit by doing so. Last year, sales were $16.8 billion with net income of $3.8 billion.

Philip Morris International, which sells tobacco products everywhere but the U.S, rakes in even more dough: $27 billion in sales and $7 billion in profit last year.

The company split up was arranged to help block the U.S. version of Philip Morris from health-related lawsuits and for the American version to promote tobacco regulation by the Food and Drug Administration on terms favorable PM USA, in other words, in ways that lock in the dominant market share of its best-selling product, Marlboro brand cigarettes.

While PM USA, now wonderfully separate, fights a holding action on U.S. soil, its one-time sister can hop sctoch the rest of the world selling even deadlier products. PMI has been testing a series of new — some more potent — tobacco products around the world.

One is Marlboro Intense that was test-marketed in Turkey. A shorter version of the flagship smoke, Marlboro Intense has tobacco packed more densely so a smoker can get a quicker nicotine kick when time is of the essence — say, eating out at a smoking-restricted restaurant or working in a smoke-free building. Another product, fatter cigarettes called Marlboro Wides, was test-marketed in Portugal in 2006. The following year, the company introduced Marlboro Mix 9, a high tar and nicotine cigarette, in Indonesia, where more than half of all males smoke daily.

So, the, is it any surprise that Louis Camilleri, head of PMI, is going to say that it isn’t that hard to quit smoking while Szymanczyk says (oh, moan) that it is?

The two companies are rich, well-run and deep-pocketed. Altria, owner of PM USA, buys favor by making major contributions to education, the arts, sports and culture. In Richmond, for instance, the decline or departure of a number of important companies has meant that just about two, electric utility Dominion and Altria, bankroll just about every community activity. And when the Virginia BioTechnology Research Park was floundering a few years back because it had little to show among its very large field of competing parks, newly-arrived Altria plopped down $350 million for a new research lab. Of course, they’re not about to tell you what goes on inside those lab walls.

What’s still overdue, however, is a reckoning. The handwriting is on the wall for tobacco products, unless you are dealing with Third World types who live in smoking cultures and haven’t been elevated to the level of caring or understanding about health warnings. In this country, cigarette smoking is on the decline. U.S. tobacco farmers started going to through a major downsizing two decades ago. The days of making deadly products and then telling customers not to use them can’t last forever. Even smokeless tobacco has been shown to be dangerous as use disappoints its makers.

It is “Oh So Richmond”, that the city (and the state) still bets on a losing horse. Not the first time, though. Look at 1861.

Peter Galuszka

Virginia saw a 20%+ increase in Temporary Assistance for Need Families (TANF) between 2007 and 2009. Some states are severely cutting back on their TANF programs, according to a report by the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities. Virginia is not mentioned as one of them.

The Redundancy in Federal Economic Development Programs
Government Accountability Office
Uncle Sam spends $6.5 billion a year on 80 economic development programs, most of which offer small business assistance. Bonus question: How much overlap is there between federal programs and Virginia’s Department of Business Assistance?

Unintended Pregnancies Cost Taxpayers $11.3 Billion Yearly
Brookings Institution
And that counts only public spending on abortions, fetal losses, births and infant medical care.

Comparing State Nutrient Trading Programs
World Resources Institute
Nutrient trading programs in the four Chesapeake Bay states should be harmonized to encourage more transactions between buyers and sellers in different states.

The tale of Dominique Strauss Kahn would seem too lusty for an international thriller: The managing director of the International Monetary Fund and a member of the pampered Parisian elite is plucked from the first class section of an Air France jetliner just as it is about the leave the U.S. by New York cops who charge him with sexually assaulting a West African maid at his $3,000-a-night Sofitel hotel suite in Midtown Manhattan.