Bacon's Rebellion

With only nine days until the election, EMR re-posted “The AntiPartisan Voting Guide” with corrections and changes suggested by those who read the original post on 8 October.

There is reason to believe that AntiPartisanism has the potential to take root.

There is the press coverage cited in the revised post, as well as coverage of voter positions in several specific races that support AntiPartisanism.

Today, WaPo had an important front page stories on The Anger of Ignorance voters in both Section A and in Outlook.

And then there is this from a weekly paper:

“Dear Congress Member:

“The purpose of this letter is to explain to you why I am not going to vote for you.

“If you are presently a member of either chamber, and you are running for re-election, I will vote for the person who is running against you. …”

The reasons the letter writer gives for not voting suggest the author is one of those in the grasp of The Anger of Ignorance. However, the fact that citizens do not understand the governance structure or what the issues really are is further proof of the need for AntiPartisanism.

EMR

The ANTIPARTISAN VOTERS GUIDE – YEAR ONE

With Federal mid-term elections less than ten days away and important contests facing voters in many states, it is time for The ANTIPARTISAN VOTERS GUIDE – YEAR ONE.

After analyzing parameters, principles and strategies, The ANTIPARTISAN VOTERS GUIDE for the inaugural year of the AntiPartisan campaign can be reduced to four simple rules:

1. If the incumbent is a Donkey Clan member, vote for the Elephant Clan candidate UNLESS there is a creditable non-aligned candidate* who can win.

2. If the incumbent is an Elephant Clan member, vote for the Donkey Clan candidate UNLESS there is a creditable non-aligned candidate* who can win.

3. If the office in question is ‘open,’ vote for the Donkey Clan member, UNLESS there is a creditable non-aligned candidate* who can win.

4. In the rare instance where there are two creditable non-aligned candidates* who can win and one is a lawyer, vote for the other one.

*‘Non-aligned candidates’ include all candidates who have formally and irrevocably renounced partisan Clan affiliation.

A BRIEF EXPOSITION OF THE FOUR VOTERS GUIDE RULES

On the first two rules:

Most voters would feel better about themselves if they voted for someone they believed REALLY wanted to make the world a better place for someone besides the candidate, his / her Clan and the Clan’s financial backers. However, it is not prudent to waste votes on someone who has no chance of winning UNLESS the candidate is an avowed AntiPartisan candidate that supports Fundamental Transformations. In this case, every vote WILL count, even if the candidate does not win.

On the third rule:

Voting for the Donkey Clan candidate in open contests will avoid the GRIDLOCK that would result from a Donkey Clan administration and Elephant Clan legislature at the Federal level. Citizens of the US do have two years to waste on more governance gridlock.

One should not worry that a single Clan would control both administration and legislature. The goal, for reasons spelled out below, is Transformation, NOT gridlock. Voting out ALL the Clan-aligned incumbents will send a clear enough message that Business-As-Usual is not an acceptable strategy.

On the fourth rule:

Shakespear stated the proper strategy with respect to lawyers and he was centuries ahead of the most egregious problems caused by ‘the bar.’ However, the Bard’s strategy must be broadened to reflect 21st century reality:

Society must evolve to rely the actions of citizens, not the actions of agents, surrogates and unaccountable / unresponsive ‘representatives.’

With respect to governance, citizens must have representatives who understand the need for solutions that meet the needs of the vast majority, NOT representatives who are trained in the art of advocacy for client that are, by definition, WRONG HALF THE TIME.

It is clear that the enlightened interest of the vast majority of citizens INCLUDES respecting the legitimate interests of ALL minorities.

Note: These rules reflect the view voters in ‘swing districts’ as documented by “In Swing Districts, Old is Out and New is In: Seniority no longer prized as more voters demand results.” WaPo 15 October 2010 Page A-1. The key problem will come from entrenched candidates.

Some suggest term limits would address the problem of entrenched Clan candidates. Term limits are nothing more than an excuse to postpone Fundamental Transformations in governance structure.

It is the STRUCTURE that is the problem. It matters far less WHO is in office.

Within a transformed governance structure, term limits would be an integral component of any fair the system. That is not because term limits remove dead wood but because they encourage office holders to change venues, change perspectives and change Estates.

In addition, term limits would provide an incentive for those with good ideas and initiative to move up – from Community manager to Regional cabinet member to MegaRegional legislator to Continental chief executive – even it they do not change Estates.

THE TOP PRIORITY

The top priority for Fundamental Transformation of governance structure is NOT to end wars, balance budgets, eliminate trade deficits, create jobs, support renewable energy, reverse environmental degradation, address climate change, fix Social Security, provide adequate health care, reform the criminal justice system, transform education processes, end monopolies and inequitable subsidies, solve the Mobility and Access Crisis, solve the Affordable and Accessible Housing Crisis, solve the Helter Skelter Crisis or even cure Mass OverConsumption.

The TOP priority of Fundamental Transformation of governance structure is to set in motion an evolution of governance so that there is match between the structure of Agencies and the economic, social and physical reality in 2010.

Matching governance structure with reality requires that Agencies exist for EACH of the nine organic components of human settlement from the Cluster to the Community (4), from the SubRegion to the MegaRegion (3) and from the continent to the planet (2). That will allow for the evolution of THE functional governance imperatives:

The level of control and responsibility must be at the level of impact.

When there are multiple levels of impact, responsibility must be SHARED in an equitable manner.

The ‘biggest’ Agency does NOT control JUST BECAUSE it has a larger jurisdiction or is ‘higher’ in the overall governance structure.

The closer an Agency is to the subject of Agency action, the better.

The closer the citizens who elect the Agency are to the subject of Agency action, the better.

There must evolve governance procedures that respect citizen interests at smaller scales of governance without endangering the interests of citizens at larger scales of governance. The principles that evolve should reflect the universal imperative of sustainability – to meet citizens current needs without jeopardizing future generations ability to meet their needs.

These imperatives for the allocation of governance responsibility are no more radical than:

● “The king does not have the ONLY say” was in 1215,

● “There are THREE Estates” was in 1302,

● “The Crown cannot UNILATERALLY declare a tax on tea” was in 1773, or

● “Of the people, by the people and for the people’ was in 1776

New scales of governance Agencies and new r
elationships between governance Agencies are essential for civilization to achieve a sustainable trajectory.

The root problem is not BIG government. The problem is BAD governance structure.

The dysfunction of scale in managing society does not end with Agencies,. Big, unaccountable Enterprises and Institutions are just as detrimental to citizens and Households as Big, unaccountable Agencies.

While it is true that a growing number of Citizens do not trust ‘Big’ government, they do not REALLY trust ANY level of government as currently structured. Many believe any change will just make things worse. The first step is broad citizen support for to Fundamentally Transform the governance structure.

AND THEN WHAT?

Once there exists a rational set of Agencies and a rational distribution of governance responsibilities, THEN it will be possible to end the wars, balance budgets, eliminate trade deficits, create jobs, support renewable energy, reverse environmental degradation, address climate change, fix Social Security, provide adequate health care, reform the criminal justice system, transform education processes and solve the Mobility and Access Crisis, the Affordable and Accessible Housing Crisis or the Helter Skelter Crisis.

Citizens will come to understand that Mass OverConsumption is NOT sustainable and that the Wealth Gap must be closed. Some suggest that a more complex governance structure will slow decisions and thwart ‘growth.’ Pardon me? It is excessive consumption and the looming reality of Peak Resources that has placed civilization as-it-is-currently-known in jeopardy. More equitably distributing governance responsibility will increase the number of citizens involved but it need not slow down decisions where the cost and benefits of action are clear and those impacted have a voice.

To achieve equitable distribution of resources, all citizens must have the opportunity to prosper based on effort, ability and acceptance of responsibility for their actions – individual and collective. Success cannot be based on gambling, happenstance and inheritance for the reasons spelled out at the conclusion of this Perspective.

In the new context, Agencies can work with the other three Estates – Enterprises, Institutions and Citizens / Households – to insure that ALL Citizens have the opportunity to be happy and safe AND evolve a sustainable trajectory for civilization.

A sustainable trajectory for civilization will require:

● A Global and continental Balance of consumption with resource regeneration

● Optimizing MegaRegional, New Urban Regional and SubRegional Resilience

● Achieving relative Balance at the Community, Village, Neighborhood and Cluster scales.
With respect to the imperative of ‘sustainability’ See Chapter 23 of The Shape of the Future.

EVOLVING AWAY FORM A TWO CLAN POLITICAL SYSTEM

The two currently dominate political Clans in the US have perfected the art of achieving a 50.5 percent ‘majority.’ This state of affairs does not meet the needs of ANY cohort of citizens or their Organizations – including the leaders of the Clan that won the last election.

The ‘two party’ system may have made sense when the vast majority of the humans in the US were not CITIZENS and they were:

● Illiterate

● Had no right or opportunity to participate in the political process

● Made a living as subsistence farmers, indentured servants or slaves

● Participated in Regional agrarian societies with mercantile / colonial supply chains

● Were unconstrained by natural resources (aka, Natural Capital) because resources were effectively ‘infinite’ in relationship to the population and per capita consumption at the time

● It took a week for information to get from northern Massachusetts to southern Geogia.

Under these conditions, the two Clan system allowed for a articulation of ‘clear-enough’ alternatives that guided part-time governance practitioners who met and acted in isolation from the majority of the citizens they represented. In an agrarian society, governance practitioners acted on a narrow spectrum of issues that reflected the far more simple economic, social and physical context of society.

In 2010 the VAST MAJORITY of the humans in the US are:

● CITIZENS with the right, duty and opportunity to participate in the governance process

● Illiterate – a growing number have advanced educations

● Securing their livelihood within a complex, Global Urban society with Global competition and a Global supply chain

● Constrained by per capita consumption because humans have reached and / or exceed Peak Resources and not JUST Peak Petroleum.

● Information transfer is instantaneous

Compounding these profound differences, there are a bewildering array of new factors to consider at every level of economic, social and physical activity in the Global, Urban society.

In addition, there are generations of Myths and misconceptions concerning what constitutes the best interest of citizens / Households and their Organizations in the economic, social and physical spheres.

Finally, in an Urban society there are more community (small ‘c’) responsibilities and fewer personal rights, the exercise of which turn out to be in the best interest of the citizens, their Households and their Organizations.

To advocate “Originalism” with respect to governance structure is to condemn citizens to conflict and Collapse as noted in The Bottom Line at the conclusion of this Perspective. One starts with the Wealth Gap and moves quickly to terrorism. See Aftershock by Robert Reich.

Wishing for ‘the good old days when things were simple’ is as intelligent as wishing to be 16 years old again. It is time to move beyond the two Clan political system.

EVOLVING A GOVERNANCE STRUCTURE TO MATCH THE ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND PHYSICAL COMPLEXITY OF CONTEMPORARY HUMAN EXISTENCE.

The current ‘three level’ governance structure of the US (Federal / State / Municipal) reflects the reality of 1784 when Thomas Jefferson outlined the parameters that became the basis for the Northwest Ordinances adopted by the Continental Congress. Since that time citizens of the US have experienced a profound transformation.

The transition from an Agrarian society in 1784 – and in 1800 – to and Urban society in 2010 has been documented by Peter Drucker (The Age of Discontinuity) and others as the most dramatic transformation in the 220,000 (+/-) year existence of Homo sapiens. See resources cited in End Note Seven of the Prologue to The Shape of the Future.

The 210 year transformation in the US can be summarized as follows:

1800: The Countryside (including extensive ‘wilderness’ beyond a ‘frontier’) supported 95 percent of the population. This cohort was engaged in the production of food and fiber – many were subsistence farmers, indentured servants, slaves and hunter /gathers AND,

In 1800 a few scattered, compact Urbansides supported 5 percent of the population. This cohort relied primarily on Urban activities for their livelihood.

2010: There are now 70 large, complex Urbansides (the Cores of the largest 70 New Urban Regions) where 85 percent of the population of the US live and work. (Fifty-six of the New Urban Regions are agglomerated in 11 MegaRegions) AND,

In 2010 the Countryside (with no ‘frontier’ and no true ‘wilderness’) supports 15 percent of the population. Most of the Countryside population resides in smaller-scale Urban agglomerations WITHIN the Countryside or in Urban Households scattered across the Countryside. Less than 5 percent of the US population is directly involved
in the production of food, fiber and other NonUrban activities. There are no slaves, no indentured servants, almost no substance farmers and even fewer hunter /gathers.

The primary activity of humans in the US can be summarized as follows:

In 1800 – NonUrban 95, Urban 5.

In 2010 – Urban 95, NonUrban 5.

A vast array of hunter gather societies supported the evolution of Homo sapiens for about 207,000 (+/-) years. The transformation from these hunter gather societies to a wide variety of agrarian societies evolved over the next 12,800 (+/-) years. These increasingly complex agrarian societies were supported by a tiny minority of citizens who lived in ever more complex Urban enclaves. As noted in The Shape of the Future, these Urban enclaves were the crucible in which contemporary civilization was forged.

The massive and rapid transformation from multiple agrarian societies with compact Urban enclaves (cities, villages and hamlets) to a complex, interdependent, Global, Urban society was accomplished in less than 200 years. This transformation was unprecedented and the impact is still largely misunderstood.

Based on unsupported, self-serving Myths, ‘leaders’ now expect citizens to get along in 2010 with the same three-level governance structure that existed in 1800.

How is the three level 1800 governance structure working for citizens? Not well.

The Industrial Revolution has Urbanized human society as documented in Chapters 1 and 2 of The Shape of the Future. The Industrial Revolution did not exert full impact on the settlement pattern or economic and social structure of the US until after the Civil War ended in 1865. After a post Civil War industrialization boom and The Long Depression (1873 to 1896), the economic, social and physical fabric of the US was transformed by an Urban revolution of unprecedented scale.

To understand the roots and dynamics of the Urban Revolution from 1800 to 2010 in addition to The Shape of the Future and TRILO-G see, at a minimum: Guns, Germs, and Steel (Jared Diamond) The City in History (Lewis Mumford), Crabgrass Frontier (Kenneth Jackson) and (The Great Reset) Richard Florida. Also see over 100 resources cited in PART I of The Shape of the Future.

Fundamental transformation in society must be reflected in Fundamental Transformation in governance structure. As Thomas Jefferson noted:

“I am not an advocate of frequent changes in laws and constitutions but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the process of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change … institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.”

(Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:40)

Can anyone in good faith suggest that far more changes have already occurred than Jefferson believed were required to necessitate fundamental changes?

THE BOTTOM LINE

On a ‘flat’ earth with Global economic, social and physical interconnections, gross inequity at the Community, SubRegional Regional, MegaRegional and continental scales or between ethnic and religious groups is not sustainable. As noted above:

All citizens must have the opportunity to prosper based on effort, ability and acceptance of responsibility for their actions – individual and collective. Success cannot be based on gambling, happenstance, inheritance or on inequitable distribution of resources and opportunity.

It comes down to this:

Avoiding Collapse of Civilization as-it-has-evolved and the survival for Homo sapiens requires and understanding that:

In a ‘flat’ world with:

● wide-spread literacy,

● Instant communications / information dissemination, and

● Wide distribution of weapons of mass destruction / massive stockpiles of weapons of conventional destruction / ubiquitous access to weapons of inter-personal destruction:

There is no alternative but to make Fundamental Transformations of governance structure. These transformations can facilitate evolution of Fundamental Transformation of humans settlement patterns and of economic systems. These three Transformations are imperative if citizens are to achieve a sustainable trajectory for their civilization.

The question remains:

Will the genetic proclivities toward competition, acquisition, consumption and xenophobia that got Homo sapiens to this point in their evolution prevent the emergence of an Urban society with a sustainable trajectory?

EMR

Alert! Alert! Danger! Danger! Bacon is playing with fire!

Once again, I am experimenting with new media forms– this time making a brief animated “movie” based on topics debated on this blog, vivid proof that I have too much time on my hands. All my prejudices are on display. I make no effort to be fair and balanced. I don’t bother to fact check. But I do throw in a few yucks. Enjoy.

(If you can come up with better one-liners, I will plug them into the script and re-publish the movie.)

Popular histories about the Confederate States of America can be dodgy, as a recent controversy over a school textbook approved for Virginia fourth-graders shows.

American liberals are big fans of the European welfare state. They point to European models of national health care, rich pensions and generous unemployment benefits as worthy of emulation in the United States. Europeans may not make as much money as Americans, the liberals say, but they have created a more humane way of life.

What you don’t hear from the American left these days is much acknowledgment that the Europeans are backpedaling as fast as they can. There is a reason that transportation and oil-refinery unions have been striking in France and government workers are rioting again in Greece. When Greece nearly defaulted on its national debt last year, governments got a glimpse of what would happen when the money ran out, and they began enacting some of the toughest austerity measures of the post-World War II era.

While France and Greece have grabbed the headlines – protesters setting things on fire makes a visual the media can’t resist – the most important case study in austerity economics may be the United Kingdom. Taking out the carving knife, the newly elected Conservative Party government is dissecting government with a vigor not seen since Margaret Thatcher’s heyday.

The secret to restoring the United Kingdom’s economic vitality, says Prime Minister David Cameron, is to slash public spending and reinvigorate the private sector. The Conservative Party plan calls for a combination of spending cuts, tax increases and targeted tax cuts for business that would reduce Britain’s borrowing by $180 billion a year by 2015 – a fiscal consolidation equivalent to 6.2 percent- of that year’s expected gross domestic product (GDP).

The draconian measures defy the Keynesian doctrine that the best way to jump-start the economy during an economic downturn is to increase deficit spending. While deficit spending may give the economy a short-term jolt, evidence is accumulating that large ongoing deficits cause serious long-term damage, especially when the national debt is already high. Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff have argued famously that when the national debt of advanced nations exceeds 90 percent of GDP, economic growth tends to slow considerably. A more recent study published by the World Bank identified a tipping point at a 77 percent debt-to-GDP ratio.

With a 2010 debt-GDP ratio of 72.7 percent, the United Kingdom is near that tipping point. (The United States is well past it.) Preaching that the nation faces an “age of austerity,” Mr. Cameron has called upon Britons to show restraint (no riots, please) and adopt the spirit of self-sacrifice their forebears displayed during the two world wars. Expecting to sack more than 600,000 government jobs, Conservatives are gambling that whacking state spending in a weak economy will restore market confidence and encourage private businesses to step up their investment and hiring.

Because government spending accounts for such a large share of the economy in some depressed regions of the United Kingdom, Conservatives hope to prime the pump of private investment by pumping funds into regional industry clusters. The track record of such industrial policy is not encouraging, but politically, it may be necessary to prop up the economy beyond the confines of the prosperous London metropolitan area. With the exception of the regional stimulus spending, however, the United Kingdom is hewing to a budget discipline that U.S. conservatives can only dream about.

No political figure of Mr. Cameron’s stature has spoken as honestly to Americans, nor has anyone prominent – outside of Wisconsin’s Republican Rep. Paul Ryan – offered a cost-cutting program as far-reaching. The House Republicans’ Pledge to America would roll back spending by roughly $100 billion a year, to pre-stimulus, pre-TARP levels. But to achieve budget balance over the course of an economic cycle would require spending cuts on the order of $1 trillion yearly. Meanwhile, the U.S. political class and its intellectual enablers remain in steadfast denial. Progressives such as Robert Reich and Paul Krugman argue that the United States needs more government spending, not less.

Americans should watch the outcome of the English experiment closely. Republicans likely will spend the next two years crossing swords with President Obama, a dogged defender of the leviathan state. The key electoral test will come in the presidential election of 2012. By then, the results of the English experiment should be in. Either it will be a model worth emulating or it will prove to be an economic and political failure. I’m betting austerity will pay off for the United Kingdom. I can only pray that the United States can embrace serious cost-cutting before the gravitational tug of our massive debt pulls the economy into oblivion.

(This column was published originally in the Washington Times.)

When Meredith Whitney speaks, Wall Street listens. Whitney is the financial analyst who first warned that the real estate crash spelled disaster for the U.S. banking system. In a new, 600-page report, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” she sounds the alarm for a second-wave financial crisis afflicting state and local government.

Whitney sees scary parallels between the fiscal condition of states/municipalities and the banks, including excess leverage, off balance-sheet financing, and a lack of transparency. As falling real estate values continue to undermine property tax revenues, and as federal stimulus funds dribble to a halt, she says, heavily indebted municipal governments will find themselves in deep trouble.

Two of the 15 states studied — Texas and Virginia — get positive ratings under Whitney’s rating system. That is reason for Virginians to take some grim satisfaction but no excuse to get complacent. We have issues galore to deal with, including rising Medicaid costs, schools that don’t teach, $620 million owed to the state retirement system, and a transportation-funding mechanism in worse repair than Interstate 95′s creaky bridges. Unlike previous economic recoveries, in which gushing revenues replenished state treasuries, Virginia will enjoy little respite from fiscal stress in the decade ahead.

The years of plenty have passed. The years of hardship are upon us. We can no longer afford government-as-usual. We cannot tinker on the budgetary margins with incremental process reforms and tweaks to line items. We must thoroughly rethink how we deliver government services. If we fail to do so, circumstances will force the harsh decisions upon us.

Even as Virginia’s lawmakers grapple with short-term challenges, they should not overlook a formidable long-term threat to the state’s fiscal well-being: a federal government hurtling toward its own ignoble demise. As I argue in my book Boomergeddon, by the mid-2020s, the federal government itself will be so deeply indebted that it is highly likely to go into default. Uncle Sam then will face a budget gap equal to some 40 percent of the budget, which it will try to close through some combination of cutting spending, raising taxes, repudiating the debt, or cranking up the printing presses. The result will be economic chaos, if not another Great Depression-style meltdown.

To some, the idea that the federal government faces default within 15 years smacks of “deficit hysteria.” But look at the facts. Even the Obama administration’s own 10-year budget forecast projects that annual deficits will never shrink below $700 billion, and that the national debt will increase by $8 trillion — to $21 trillion — by 2020. The International Monetary Fund declares that the ratio of U.S. debt to the size of its economy will reach 110 percent by 2015, about the same as Greece’s when its debt woes sparked Europe’s sovereign debt crisis.

Moreover, President Obama’s forecast is based upon a number of optimistic assumptions, not the least of which is that Congress will stop spending money like a Valley Girl with daddy’s credit card. Making a different set of likely tax and spending assumptions, the non-partisan Concord Coalition sees total debt exceeding $28 trillion by 2020.

Obama’s economic growth forecasts are shaky, too. His 10-year projection assumes economic growth averaging 3.4 percent annually, with no recession — an economic performance comparable to the Internet-fueled boom of the Clinton years. But there is no sign of a boom in the making. Indeed, the U.S. will be fortunate to avoid a double-dip recession. Plugging different growth assumptions into the Obama model — 1 percentage point slower economic growth through the decade, plus a mild recession toward the end — yields a national debt of $29 trillion by 2020.

Likewise, the Obama budget model is highly sensitive to changes in interest rates. The president’s number crunchers assumed that interest rates on 10-year Treasuries will never climb higher than 5.3 percent during the 2010s. But if 10-year bonds returned to the rate of the early 1990s, around 10 percent, the national debt could exceed $36 trillion! If the federal government somehow survives the gantlet of the 2010s, it then faces the wave of 78 million retiring boomers as well as the drawdown of Social Security’s (anticipated) $4.3 trillion trust fund, forcing the Treasury to borrow trillions more.

Per capita federal spending in Virginia is seventh highest in the nation. When Uncle Sam defaults, Virginia will feel the anguish more than most. The commonwealth must begin now preparing for that day. Gov. Bob McDonnell’s Commission on Government Reform and Restructuring is a good place to start. But it will take a lot more than privatizing ABC stores to diversify the economy and bullet-proof the commonwealth’s finances.

(This column was first published in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.)

From a Wall Street Journal article on government austerity and economic development in the United Kingdom, making the point that efforts to rejuvenate regional economies have a mixed track record in the UK and elsewhere:

Stuart S. Rosenthal, an economics professor at Syracuse University, remembers driving through Virginia in 1997 and seeing a sign saying, “You are entering southwest Virginia’s high tech corner” [sic — the sign said “corridor].

“And all I could see was cows and farms,” he said. Recent employment data shows that aside from one pocket, little has changed.

Ouch!

Are those signs still up? If so, someone please take them down.

Virginia has long been in the forefront of using privatization as a way to finance public projects without draining public budgets. It has been touted as a way to have your cake and eat it, too, by both Democrats and Republicans.

Gov. Bob McDonnell has repeatedly asserted that the government of Virginia managed to close a $1.8 billion shortfall in the Fiscal 2010 budget “without a tax increase.” (See his column in the Wall Street Journal.) That may be true from a technical viewpoint but it leaves a few things unsaid. I won’t even get into the complex deal by which the commonwealth effectively borrows money from the Virginia Retirement System and repays the sum as part of a larger pension overhaul. More to the point is the matter of some $95 million in higher “fees” in the biennial budget, plus multimillion-dollar reductions in targeted tax breaks that bring the total to $137 million.

The accompanying chart from the House Appropriations Committee shows the grab bag of additional fees inserted by the General Assembly into the budget legislation during the last day of the 2010 session. There are two issues here.

First, when is a “fee” not a fee but a tax increase? I would argue that a fee becomes a tax when the revenue generated by the fee exceeds the level needed to provide the related government service. By that definition, how many of the above are fees and how many are taxes? I don’t know. But an honest rendering of accounts probably would suggest that the General Assembly did increase some taxes.

The second issue is the manner in which these fee increases and tax break deductions were enacted. According to Del. Robert G. Marshall, R-Manassas, they were jammed into a much larger bill at the last minute. Legislators never had an opportunity to vote them up or down on their individual merits. In other words, there was minimal transparency. It makes me sour and argumentative to see fees and taxes increased in this manner.

Marshall has a solution. He proposes an amendment to the state constitution as follows:

Any law that appropriates funds shall not contain any provision that imposes, continues, increases or revives any tax, fee, or fine, nor shall any such law contain any provision that reduces or eliminates any credit, deduction, or exemption associated with any tax, fee or fine.

Personally, I happen to dislike tax credits and exemptions as a tool of public policy and think many if not all of them should be eliminated on the grounds that they provide preferences not available to the general public and that they reduce the tax base. On the other hand, I also believe in transparent government. If anyone has an argument in opposition to Marshall’s amendment, I would like to hear it.

(Marshall provides a bit more information about his proposal here.)

This Tuesday, the Lawn at the University of Virginia was a portrait of early fall beauty. Inside the equally-magnificent Rotunda, Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks spoke on “Difference and Democracy in the Post-Secular World.”

A common refrain on this blog that gains more currency as frustration with the anemic economic recovery grows is that regulation of business is somehow to blame.

The Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia has issued an important new report on transportation, “Well Within Reach: America’s New Transportation Agenda.” The report is the brainchild of former Gov. Gerald Baliles, the last governor of Virgina to think seriously about transportation.

I haven’t had time to read it closely enough yet to provide any thoughtful comments, but a quick glance suggests that the report does incorporate some new thinking, as evidenced from this quote in the executive summary: “Funding for the Highway System was intended to come from drivers, but the current fuel tax no longer creates a direct link between charges and use. We must return to a ‘pay as you go’ system.”

Paul Krugman advanced the argument in a recent NYTimes column — I kid you not — that there has not been a big expansion of government spending under the Obama administration. America needs more spending and bigger deficits in order to gin up some real stimulus!

I know, I know, Krugman is an easy target — like shooting fish in a barrel. But he won a Nobel Prize, forcrissake, and he’s a columnist in the New York Times, a newspaper that some people take seriously. What’s more, he’s so insufferably smug and contemptuous, he needs to be knocked down a peg or two. So, I do my best in the video above.

(Show mercy on me for the technical quality of the video. YouTube and video-making is a brand-new thing for me. But go ahead and thrash away at the facts and logic expressed therein.)