Bacon's Rebellion

  • Regulation Run Amok – Community Banks

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    James A. Bacon

    This is a story of regulation run amok. It’s been said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Never is that thought more germane than when applied to government regulation. In today’s episode of “Regulation Run Amok” we’ll examine the unintended consequences of some well meaning regulation on community banks. For an excellent account of this phenomenon, please read the op-ed piece, “Main Street Lenders Choked by Regulators.”.

    Several quotes from the op-ed piece should be of interest to the readers of BaconsRebellion:

    “It appears that, having failed to detect the sub prime, housing and derivatives bubbles (which emanated from Wall Street), the regulatory agencies have decided to get tough on Main Street lenders.”

    “If you want to figure out why the economy cannot find solid footing, look no further than the way the regulators are treating commercial real estate loans in community bank portfolios.”

    There has been a great deal of talk about government regulation lately. Liberals believe that all manner of problems would be solved if the government just regulated more of our lives.

    Conservatives note that the government is already too big (based, at least, on the size of the deficit). However, liberals ignore the simple fact that heavy regulation has often failed despite America’s 100+ year long experiment with “big government”. Conservatives turn intellectually blind when reminded that it was often their conservative heroes (Reagan, GW Bush) who grew the size of government and the size of the related deficits the most.

    Given the obvious issues with both liberal and conservative dogma, I am today adopting the Realist political philosophy. This philosophy will espouse the recognition of simple truths. One of those truths is that government is not sufficiently competent to play as large a role in our lives as the liberals would like it to play. The regulatory pummeling of community banks while those “too big to fail” only get bigger is but one example of this reality.

  • A Story from Mr. Groveton, err… West Potomac

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    James A. Bacon

    I graduated from Groveton High School in the 1970s. In 1986 Fairfax County combined Groveton High School with Ft Hunt High School and named the new school West Potomac High School. West Potomac still occupies the same buildings on Quander Rd where I once attended class. It still sits just down the street from the seedy Rt 1 corridor. It is still just around the corner from my old home on Huntington Ave. It is still a mix of poor and middle class people. It is still a racially diverse area. And the kids who attend the school are still a source of inspiration and pride to me. This is one of their stories.

    Maryam Ali is not your typical crew team member. She would not have fit in at the Lilly white, toffy prep schools where some of the contributors to BaconsRebellion came of age. She is poor, lives in subsidized housing and is an African American. She lives with her hard working widowed mother. Sometimes her family has to decide between spending $2 for a bus ride or having lunch. If Maryam can’t afford to pay the costs of being on the crew club the parents of the other young people in the club will make up the difference. The good people of the Rt 1 corridor do not run to Richmond with their hats in hand like so many of their fellow Virginians from downstate.

    For the edification of many of the ill-informed contributors and commenters on BaconsRebellion – Maryam lives in Fairfax County. She hardly fits the misconceived and ignorant stereotype of a Fairfax County resident. She is from one of the many working class families in that part of Fairfax County. When the weak kneed members of the General Assembly steal from Fairfax County they steal from kids like Maryam.

    However, none of the limousine liberals so prevalent on this blog need worry about Maryam. She has more moxie and determination than all of the Democrats in Congress added together. She also has the benefit of good hearted neighbors in Fairfax County. When she can’t afford the costs of a trip with the crew team an anonymous donor pays for her to go.

    My bet is that Maryam will grow up to be a well educated, well adjusted successful taxpaying citizen. She will probably resent the “goodie two shoes” liberals who want to take her hard earned money so it can be given to those unwilling to claw their way up the economic ladder.

    My bet is that the life experiences of growing up poor in Fairfax County will lead Mayam to a conservative world view. You see, people who earn everything they have resent big government trying to take it away. This is especially true when you start with very little.

    Mr. Groveton should know.

    Read the full article here – http://bit.ly/dBJhH0

  • The Most Corrupt States

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    James A. Bacon

    The Daily Beast has crunched some interesting data sets — convictions of elected officials, racketering & extortion, forgery & counterfeiting, fraud and embezzlement — to rank the 50 states and District of Columbia by corruption.

    Virginia ranks No. 2 on the list.

    That’s either very, very good or very, very bad. The Daily Beast is not clear. (Here’s the story.) When a state is rated No. 2 on a list entitled “The Most Corrupt States,” the implication is that it is the second most corrupt. But the number of convictions seems pretty low compared to most other states, including such notorious places as New Jersey, New York, Louisiana and Chicago, so I’m assuming that Virginia is actually the second least corrupt state in the union.

    If so, that’s pretty good news. By the lamentably lax standards of the day, the commonwealth is, relatively speaking, pretty clean.

  • Has Chesapeake Bay’s Time Finally Come?

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    James A. Bacon

    After decades of neglect, it appears that a lawsuit settlement and new rules from the Obama Administration could actually start the process of reviving America’s greatest inland sea.
    On May 11, a lawsuit spearheaded by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, and various Virginia and Maryland watermen’s groups and legislators was settled with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. On the next day, the EPA announced a slew of new federal actions that may go far to help resolve pollution issues.
    The irony is that the Clean Water Act, a Nixon era law, has been around since 1972 but the EPA has been laggard in enforcing it, especially in the case of the Bay, according to the Bay Foundation. True, point source polluters, such as a Baltimore area steel mill or a Portsmouth chemical plant, have been forced to cut emissions. But the biggest single polluter has so far gone untouched — the big housing subdivision and the storm water runoff it produces. Farms are a problem, especially huge, corporate poultry and hog operations that produce immense amounts of animal waste.
    The lawsuit and the new EPA rules will do the following, according to Chuck Epes, a spokesman for the CBF:
    • The EPA will take a “Total Maximum Daily Load” snapshot of what pollutants are actually going into the bay.
    • New federal guidelines will put in place that will restrict storm water runoff from big housing developments. Some sort of trade off or offset might be used as it is for air polluters. According to Epes, if Charles City County approve a 5,000-home subdivision, it will need to cut a like amount of stormwater runoff from another source.
    • New rules for animal waste from farms will be in place by 2014.

    The odd thing about the lawsuit and the Obama initiatives is that it basically makes the EPA do the job it is tasked with doing. Despite 38 years of the Clean Water At, the Bay is not discernibly cleaner than before. In fact, new problems have shown up, namely oxygen-starved “dead zones” in the mouths of the York, Rappahannock and Potomac Rivers during the summer not to mention depleted crab, oyster and fish stocks.

    To be sure, pollution isn’t the only problem that have reduced tremendously the Bay’s once-rich stocks of oysters. Disease has. Yet programs to introduce new, disease-resistant oyster types haven’t taken off.
    Nor have various inter-governmental efforts to do something about the Bay. There have been committees galore among Virginia, Maryland, the District of Columbia and Pennsylvania to do something to cut Bay pollution, with little result.
    The do-nothing approach reached its high (or low) point with President George W. Bush’s administration. Not only did the EPA get very lazy about the Bay, the Bushies ignored the lawsuit filed by the CBF in 2008. Obama, however, has taken it seriously.
    The one unknown factor in the clean-up is how much it will cost. Developers and real estate agents might complain about the extra expensive of dealing with the results of their projects, but many of the mega-subdivisions probably need to be rethought anyway since they create more of a car-centric, sedentary life style with cul-de-sacs that discourage efficient traffic flows and hurt emergency workers trying to get to a person or a house fire.
    In any event, it is about time for something to be done with the Bay. The Clean Water Act has done a great deal to restore rivers and streams — something a lot of today’s movers and shakers in their 40s are too young to remember.
    Maybe it is the Bay’s turn after all.
    Peter Galuszka

  • OUT OF THE OILY SLIME — FOR A MOMENT

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    James A. Bacon

    A RECENT JOINT FORUM BY FEDERAL AGENCIES AND SUBREGIONAL ORGANIZATIONS INDICATES THAT THE NATIONAL CAPITAL SUBREGION HAS WASTED THE LAST DECADE BY NOT IMPLEMENTING A BROAD CONSENSUS CONCERNING THE PATH TO A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE.

    THE OILY SLIME IN THE GULF DOCUMENTS THAT THERE WAS NOT A DAY – MUCH LESS A DECADE – THAT CITIZENS AND THEIR ORGANIZATIONS COULD AFFORD TO SQUANDER ON THE PATH TO FUNCTIONAL AND SUSTAINABLE HUMAN SETTLEMENT PATTERNS.

    WHILE AGENCIES, ENTERPRISES AND INSTITUTIONS ATTEMPT TO CONTAIN THE BP BLOW OUT, LET US TAKE A MOMENT TO CONSIDER HOW TO DISENGAGE THE HEALTH, SAFETY AND WELFARE OF CITIZENS IN THE WASHINGTON-BALTIMORE NEW URBAN REGION FROM LARGE, PRIVATE VEHICLES. DISENGAGEMENT WILL DEMONSTRATE HOW TO ADDRESS THE PROBLEM OF MASS CONSUMPTION OF PETROLEUM. IT WILL ALSO BE A MAJOR STEP TOWARD A SUSTAINABLE TRAJECTORY FOR URBAN CIVILIZATION.

    On 3 May, for the first time in a long time, EMR rode METRO to the Wash COG headquarters near Union Station for a Joint Federal / SubRegional Forum. See End Note One. The forum was intended to showcase on the new Federal Agency (US DOT, US HUD and US EPA) emphasis on ‘sustainability.’ There was much good talk at the forum but not much to inspire confidence that the overarching unsustainable trajectory of society will change any time soon.

    EMR was invited to the forum because he is an alumnus of the turn-of-the-century “Group of 40.” (Sounds ‘old school,’ right?) The Group of 40 was a broad based coalition from which The [Greater] Washington Smart Growth Alliance emerged. This Alliance is made up of Agency, Enterprise and Institution representatives and got off to a good start in the early 00s.

    VOICES FROM THE PAST

    In the post-forum communications that always spring up between old acquaintances after such an event there have been a number of useful observations and suggestions put on the table. Several of them will be addressed in this venue in the near future. Perhaps most often enunciated is the call to restate the consensus of the early 00s that has was over-washed by the feel good BOOM that ended in 2007.

    One lightening rod at the 3 May forum was a statement by the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance (NVTA). The leader of NVTA called for those present to support Roadways to access ‘the places people want to live’ – aka, remote land in which sponsors of NVTA have speculative interests (aka, direct and indirect speculative ‘investments’).

    For those who do not know, NVTA is an Institution sponsored by Roadway / Developer / Builder Enterprises. See End Note Two. (Full disclosure: Twenty plus years ago when building and improving SOME Roadways made economic, social and physical sense, EMR was the Chair of the NVTA Technical Committee and served on NVTA Board of Directors.)

    The rational response to these statements of outrage about ‘places people want to live’ outside the logical location of the Clear Edge around the Core of the National Capital SubRegion is this:

    The leader / spokesperson of NVTA had no choice.

    What the spokesman says is what the owners and officers of the Enterprises who sponsor his Institution want to hear. It is also what they want Enterprise Media (aka, MainStream Media) repeat and citizens to believe for as long as possible. See THE ESTATES MATRIX – PART TWO of TRILO-G

    THREE KEY REALITIES

    The NVTA wish list for new Roadways and the cries of outrage about ‘places people want to live’ puts a spotlight on three key realities about the National Capital SubRegion:

    1. If quantifyable location-variable costs were fairly and equitably allocated within a well-informed market context, then the places to which NVTA lobbies to have Agencies build Roadways would NOT be popular, feasible or even seriously considered by builders OR buyers.

    Trust the market, but FIRST, the playing field must be leveled with valid data, analysis and quantification. A fair allocation of costs would eliminate hidden and misguided subsidies and unintended externalities.

    2. The Region and its SubRegions must achieve Balance of Jobs / Housing / Services / Recreation / Amenity in each of the Beta Communities that make up the Washington-Baltimore New Urban Region and its SubRegions.

    The FIRST STEP to achieve Alpha Community Balance is Affordable and Accessible Housing NEAR Jobs.

    3. In 2002, Radial Analysis of the National Capital SubRegion ‘Activity Centers’ documented that Job locations were center weighted in the SubRegion. The vast majority of the Jobs were INSIDE the logical location of the Clear Edge around the Core of the SubRegion. Nothing has happened since 2002 to alter that reality.

    The centrality of Job locations has not been impacted by:

    – The residential settlement pattern impacts of the Wrong Size House / Wrong Location caused by the Housing Bubble from 2002 to 2006,

    – The Over-Servicing of scattered residential land uses by Agencies, Enterprises and Institutions, and

    – The derivative and speculation and fraud driven financial meltdown from 2007 to ? that has resulted in a distinct pattern of foreclosures and short sales in the outer Radial Band beyond the logical location of the Clear Edge around the Core of the National Capitol SubRegion.

    On the question of Job locations in the future:

    Newswire is published by “Planetizen” www.planetizen.com an omnivore ‘planning’ web site owned by Urban Insight. Urban Insight is a Los Angles based Enterprise that describes itself as a “web design, content management and Internet strategy” corporation. The 3 May issue of Newswire summarized a Harvard Business Review note of 28 April 2010:

    “The Suburbanization of Business Headquarters May be Coming to an End.”

    This brief article from Harvard Business Review suggests why major Enterprises are abandoning the “office campus.” The reasons run parallel to the notes that Groveton (an Enterprise insider and new BaconsRebellion Blogger) provided recently in his comments summarizing the parameters impacting the evolution of Balance in the Greater Fredericksburg SubRegion on this Blog.

    Based on SYNERGY’s analysis of Loudoun and Prince William County “employment” patterns over the past 18 years, the trend toward ‘subUrban’ office campuses was ‘ending’ long ago. It does not take a rocket scientist to understand why AOL and WorldCom made bad location decisions or how these bad decisions impacted Enterprise performance.

    THE IMPORTANCE OF ACTIVITY CENTERS

    Those outside the National Capital SubRegion may not be familiar with the importance of the ‘Activity Centers’ noted in Key Reality #3 above.

    There is a long story – too long for this item – about the rise, demise and apparent resurrection of Activity Centers in the Wash COG sphere of influence. EMR only has first hand experience concerning the rise and demise. Somehow the idea of Activity Centers has had a revival since 2003 as suggested by the report:

    “Region Forward: A Comprehensive Guide to Regional [SubRegional] Planning and Measuring Progress in the 21st Century”

    This document was approved by the Wash COG Board of Directors on 13 January 2010 and handed out at the 3 May forum.

    EMR intends to find out more about the revival of interest in Activity Centers and the need for Quantification but in the meantime, why are ‘Activity Centers’ important?

    With a robust Vocabulary, a comprehensive Conceptual Framework and science-based Quantification – via Regional Metrics or other reality-based conceptual frameworks – Activity Centers could put citizens on the path to functional and sustainable patterns and densities of human settlement in the Washington-Baltimore New Urban Region.

    It was good news that the Activity Center concept is not dead. It is also good news that ideas presented in “Blueprint for a Better Region” are still on the table. Graphics from “Blueprint for a Better Region” showed up in the EPA PowerPoint presentation on Federal Agency initiatives at the forum on 3 May. See End Note Three

    WASTED DECADE

    While there were a number of useful exchanges at the Forum, from the perspective of one who helped forge the general consensus achieved by the Group of 40’s efforts and put content into the articulation of the Activity Centers, the 00s have been a lost decade.

    The consensus that employment was center-weighted and the consensus on the need for the evolution of Balanced Urban enclaves focused on the existing employment and transport system inside the Clear Edge around the Core of the SubRegion has been honored in the breach.

    One need go no further than pages 1 thru 6 of the Metro section of WaPo for 9 May 2010. NB: The Vocabulary to articulate the early 00s consensus has evolved since that time but the substance has not changed as conversations on 3 May confirmed.

    It is in fact appalling that NVTA can STILL talk about ‘the places where people want to live’ – code for scattered Urban dwellings – in a public forum and have those who know better sit quietly.

    The majority of the participants said in 2002, and many of those who returned for the reunion still agreed, on the basic parameters of a sustainable trajectory but Agency, Enterprise and Institution ACTION. They have been distracted by propaganda, Geographic Illiteracy and Autonomobility Myths. The 9 May WaPo articles and commentaries focus on the problems generated by relocation of military personal and the ‘demise’ of METRO but there are many other indicators of dysfunction.

    BACK TO THAT OILY SLIME IN THE GULF.

    That slimy goo and those dead birds and turtles should remind us that there must be renewed, concerted effort to evolve functional and sustainable settlement patterns that Do NOT depend on Large, Private vehicles for Mobility and Access. See End Note Four

    Relying on Large, Private vehicles for Mobility and Access in the Cores of New Urban Regions results in dysfunctional settlement patterns. No one can disagree the Large, Private vehicles and the settlement patterns they generate create demand for VAST quantities of energy – especially petroleum.

    The effort concerning Large, Private vehicles must be similar to the Hartwell consensus on the response to climate change which is, of course, closely related to that effort. See End Note Five

    There can be no more lost decades or there will be a much, much more than that lost. As important as Bayou ecosystems and economic stability are, the consequence of continuing an unsustainable trajectory will be far worse.

    EMR

    END NOTES

    1. Now that The Shape of the Future, 4th Printing and TRILO-G are wrapped up and the new website is evolving with professional guidance, EMR has started to step outside Greater Warrenton-Fauquier. This is the first of the items that will appear from time to time under the heading ‘Current Perspectives’ at www.emrisse.com

    2. The key supporters are individuals who TMT and Groveton love to hate. TMT has alerted readers of BaconsRebellion Blog that these same Enterprise and Institutional players have formed ‘The 2030 Group’ which is attempting to build support for the same goals as NVTA under the guise of ‘regionalism.’ Much more on that effort soon.

    3. Reminder to BaconsRebellion Blog denizens, Google the title “Blueprint for a Better Region” to access a streaming video of the “Blueprint…” PowerPoint.

    4. See “THE PROBLEM WITH CARS.” As is the case with “Blueprint…” cited in End Note Three, THE ESTATES MATRIX (noted in the text above) as well as many of the components that have been revised and included in TRILO-G, can be accessed on the web. There is a very early version of THE PROBLEM WITH CARS are accessible on line by Googleing the title. The version of THE PROBLEM WITH CARS that makes up PART THREE of TRILO-G includes the complete argument for the abandonment of Autonomobiles as the primary strategy for Urban humans to achieve Mobility and Access in New Urban Regions.

    5. BBC 11 May 2010.

  • The Right to Academic Freedom

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    James A. Bacon

    Like many conservatives, the anonymous blogger who goers by the name of his high school, likes to limit individual rights. Regarding the Virginia Attorney General’s chilling harassment of a reputable climatologist, Mr. High School writes:
    “There has never been a right to academic freedom. There is no right to academic freedom. And, God Bless, there will never be a right to academic freedom. So, any criticism of Ken Cuccinelli’s Civil Investigative Demand against Michael Mann as violating the right of academic freedom is null and void.”
    He provides absolutely no explanation for this bold and bizarre statement. But since a commenter asked “what is academic freedom” I volunteer to take one for the team.
    Back in 1940, “academic freedom,” defined as the RIGHT of professors and students to pursue academic inquiries without interference from external and political groups or authorities, was first put forward by the then Association of American Colleges and the American Association of University Professors. They stated that teachers have a right to freedom discuss their subjects in a classroom although some institutions can restrict those rights if they are religious institutions.

    Note the date of the statement — 1940. At that time Nazi Germany had invaded much of Europe and had been on a rampage over the previous decade ridding German universities of Jewish professors and other “undesirables,” revamping curricula so it would reflect the views of national socialism, burning books (see photo) and generally terrorizing academia.

    In the U.S., the “right” to academic freedom stems from the Constitutional right to freedom of speech. America’s universities have taken academic freedom very seriously over the past 70 years. It is part of a college’s accreditation consideration. AAUP keeps a list of colleges that fail on academic freedom.

    So, you have a right based directly on agreement among universities and professors and, indirectly, from the U.S. Constitution. Other countries’ constitutions do make academic freedom an explicit right, such as France, Germany, South Africa and others.

    Granted, the U.S. concept of academic freedom has been tested quite a bit since 1940. It comes from all sides. University of Colorado Professor Ward Churchill wrote that the 9/11 attacks were justified because of U.S. foreign policy. The school withstood calls for his removal. Obama adviser Larry Summers got into hot water when he stated that women’s genetic makeup may make them less likely to do well in math.

    And on it goes.

    My personal experience with academic freedom, albeit indirect, happened when I was an undergraduate at Tufts University. Just down the street from my dorm, Tufts has a graduate school with Harvard known as the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Although I have no association with Fletcher, I used their library and became friendly with some of their professors

    Its dean at the time was a former Foreign Service officer named Edmund Gullion who had experience as a diplomat in South Vietnam. This was during the highpoint of the Vietnam War and left wing radicals at school lambasted Fletcher for having as students military, CIA and foreign service officers. One night someone launched a bomb into Gullion’s office and the explosion caused extensive damage. It knocked me out of bed.

    Now that is a violation of academic freedom. So is Cuccinelli’s witch hunt.

    Peter Galuszka




  • Another New Right From The Left

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    James A. Bacon


    Another New Right From The Left.

    Liberals love inventing new rights. For the past 18 months I have heard the liberals chirping about the “right to health care”. Now the imaginary liberal rights machine has manufactured a “right to academic freedom”. Yet another pseudo-right extended only to liberals after having been manufactured in the liberals’ invisible rights factory.

    There has never been a right to academic freedom. There is no right to academic freedom. And, God Bless, there will never be a right to academic freedom. So, any criticism of Ken Cuccinelli’s Civil Investigative Demand against Michael Mann as violating the right of academic freedom is null and void.

    But did Cuccinelli do the right thing? Was there smoke sufficient to indicate a possible fire?

    There was already a review of Prof. Mann’s work by a crack team of fellow professors at Penn State, where Mr. Mann now works.

    Why did Penn State see the need for a warm and cozy review by fellow academics?

    From the final report, “Begining on and about November 22, 2009 The Pennsylvania State University began to receive numerous communications (e-mails, phone calls and letters) having accused Dr. Michael E. Mann of acts which included manipulating data, destroying records and colluding in order to hamper the progress of scientific discourse around the issue of anthpogenic global warming from approximately 1998.”.

    Cuccinelli doesn’t need to go looking for a smoking gun, Mann’s collegeues already think they found it.

    What did Penn State find?

    There were four avenues of inquiry. Dr. Mann was cleared of three allegations by a group of his academic friends perhaps wearing cardigans with leather elbow patches while alighting in the blue curls of pipe smoke wafting around their beards during this “trial”. However, even “cleared” leaves some room to question – “While a perception has been created in the weeks after the CRU e-mails were made public that Dr. Mann had engaged in the suppression or falsification of data there is no credible evidence that he ever did so and certainly not while at Penn State.”.

    “…certainly not while at Penn State.”

    Unfortunately, Dr. Mann taught at the University of Virginia (not Penn State) from 1999 – 2005.

    In the minds of liberals, our elected attorney general should outsource investigations of potential malfeasance to cabals of academics from Pennsylvania. The fact that the investigation involved actions taken in Virginia, at a state university with public funds should be ignored. Ignored, presumably, because of the Right to Academic Freedom written in invisible ink in the liberals’ version of the US Constitution.

  • The “Cooch” and Academic Freedom

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    James A. Bacon

    Of all of Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli’s bizarre initiatives, the one probing scientific research at the University of Virginia is the most frightening. It goes to the heart of academic freedom issues and conjures up some very ugly moments in American history.
    Cuccinelli’s target is Michael E. Mann, a former U.Va. climatologist now at Penn State University which is well-regarded for its study of the climate and meteorology. “The Cooch” is targeting five grants worth about $500,000 that Mann was involved with before he left Charlottesville in 2005. Cuccinelli also wants copies of all communication, including emails, scratch paper notes, whatever, between Mann and 39 other scientists around the globe.
    This latest round of wing-nuttery comes after Cuccunelli has sued the U.S. EPA for declaring carbon dioxide a pollutant, told public universities they can’t protect homosexual employees, says it’s OK if a rural prosecutor wants to rummage through a student newspapers files and so on.
    Mann is a target for Cuccinelli because he espouses the so-called “hockey stick” theory that due to human activity, global temperatures have spiked upwards in the past 100 years or so. Never mind that worldwide scientific groups see merit in Mann’s theory, it runs afoul of the conservative cognoscenti, including the National Review, American Enterprise Institute, the Heartland Institute, the Cato Institute, Rush Limbaugh, James A. Bacon and a host of others.
    So, Cuccinelli has turned to a law intended to see if academic researchers are skimming funds from their grants. He has issued “civil investigative demands,” which operate much like criminal subpoenas, for all information related to the grants and attendant communication.
    Instead of looking for financial cheating, Cuccinelli is looking for heretics. His move is reminiscent of the church putting Galileo under house arrest for saying the planets move around the sun instead of the earth.
    True, Clark Hall, the UVA center for environmental studies, has been a hotbed of global warming controversy for years. The attractive, 78-year-old brick building “on grounds’ as Wahoos like to say, was home for S. Fred Singer, the head of environmental studies who later became an outspoken opponent of global warming theories and is now an occasional speaker for right-wing talk shows.
    Later, Patrick Michaels, another UVA professor skeptical of global warming theories, drew controversy when Gov. Tim Kaine did away with his “state climatologist” job in 2006 because Kaine, a Democrat, tends to support ideas that global warming is a big problem. Conservatives and libertarians are quick to point out Kaine’s action as interference in academia.
    True, there may be an element of political payback in Cuccinelli’s hounding of Mann. But there’s a big difference between Kaine’s deal and Cuccinelli’s. For one thing, the post of “state climatologist” was a largely honorary position that hadn’t been funded for years. It originated back in the years when it was a common practice for politicians in Richmond to toss out honorary titles like bagatelles. Kaine expressed his dislike for Michael’s view by saying he did not speak for the state government and ending the honorary position. This is akin to a new governor tossing out holdovers and putting in his or her own people.
    That’s a big difference from what Cuccinelli is doing. He is going specifically after scientific research by attaching highly political tags to it and then running up big bills and harassment levels because he doesn’t like what the research says.
    Universities usually have sophisticated systems of peer review to vet both grant proposals and the research they provide. Mann told me in an email that his research was so vetted by such bodies as the National Academy of Sciences and other bodies. He has been under reviews at U.Va. and at Penn State and has always come out vindicated, he says.
    Another big question is why Cuccinelli chose these specific five grants. Mann and another U.Va. scientist told me that one such grant worth about $200,000 has nothing whatsoever to do with global warming. It is meant to help train graduate student scientists in micro-climate conditions in places such as North Alaska and the Kalahari Desert in Southern Africa. Part of the funds were used to fund field work in Botswana.
    It will indeed be interesting if Cuccinelli and his staff find a smoking gun in Botswana. But more likely is that they really don’t know anything about these five grants and are using the “CIDs” as a rather expensive way to get the “Cooch” publicity and attention among his cabal of right wing global warming naysayers.
    He has sure stirred the pot on this one. Groups such as the American Association of University Professors, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the American Civil Liberties Union have all weighed in saying that Cuccinelli’s act is an appalling violation of academic freedom.
    Some say it smacks of “McCarthyism,” referring to the alcoholic and reactionary Wisconsin senator who ruined scores of academic careers by claiming professors were influenced by Communists at the dawn of the Cold War. McCarthy didn’t have much to stand on. At one speech in West Virginia he claimed to have in his hand the names of several hundred Communist sympathizers who worked for the State Department. It turned out that he didn’t have one name. The sad thing is that no one in the news media had the sense, or the guts, to ask.
    In a figurative sense, does Cuccinelli have any names? It doesn’t appear so, given the nature of the grants he’s dead set to investigate. He’ll get the Tweets and the headlines. But UVA will be stuck with the bill of researching documents to meet his “CIDs” and its reputation will be diminished.
    Why would an honest researcher want to work with Virginia universities if his or her work is going to be challenged by the likes of Cuccinelli and he or she will have to pay all of those lawyers fees to fund the Grand Inquisitor’s witch hunts through their emails?
    Researchers and venerable institutions might well chose to go elsewhere rather than have to deal with “the Cooch.”
    Peter Galuszka

  • Cuccinelli Gets Gas

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    James A. Bacon

    Overview: Controversial Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has gas. Or, more accurately, he has a problem caused by the gas which is trapped in the coal seams under large swaths of Southwest Virginia. In 1990 Ken Cuccinelli was walking down “the lawn” at UVa to pick up his BS in Mechanical Engineering. That same year the Virginia General Assembly passed the Virginia Gas and Oil Act. For the next 20 years Ken Cuccinelli would prove to be an ambitious and successful politician while the Oil and Gas Act would prove to be yet another almost totally incompetent piece of legislation passed by an inept state legislature. On April 19 of this year the paths of Ken Cuccinelli and the Virginia Oil and Gas Act intersected. On that day, a landowner and his attorney met with one of Cuccinelli’s top deputies to discuss a new law signed by Bob McDonnell on April 13. The landowner hopes the new law will resolve a number of the more idiotic aspects of the original law. Mr. Cuccinelli seems less convinced that the new law is much better than the old law. He has complained that the new law is “too gentle”. Mr. Cuccinelli is willing to sue the federal government, he is willing to subpoena records from the University of Virginia. Let’s hope he doesn’t “chicken out” now. I’d hate to have to admit that Mr. Cuccinelli’s legal courage wanes when the targets are big companies instead of academics and the feds. How Mr. Cuccinelli handles this situation will speak volumes about his real philosophy.

    Timeline: I’ve often thought that one could win a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the buffoonery of the Virginia General Assembly. I no longer think that to be true. I know it to be true. I know it because Daniel Gilbert of the Bristol Herald has done just that. While Mr. Gilbert might not agree that the prize was awarded for reporting on buffoonery, I think he would characterize the overall situation as sad. His excellent series of articles on the matter can be found here – http://bit.ly/9XBrBo. For those without the time required to read Mr. Gilbert’s compelling prose, let me summarize:

    There is a lot of natural gas trapped along with coal underneath Virginia. The mineral rights to the natural gas belong to the landowners. In 1990, the General Assembly passed a law forcing the landowners to sell their gas rights on a pre-defined pricing schedule. Some coal companies claimed that their long ago purchase of coal rights gave them the gas rights too. In 2004, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled against the coal companies saying that the sale of coal rights did not include the sale of gas rights. This required the energy companies to negotiate with the landowners. Disputes arose. Some of the disputes are widely seen as contrived. The state of Virginia has consistently refused to use its regulatory power to adjudicate these disputes. Royalty payments from disputed gas ownership claims are put into an almost unaudited escrow fund. In 2010, Terry Kilgore patroned legislation to allow the state to adjudicate gas royalty disputes. However, there is some ambiguity in the new law (surprise, surprise). Mr. Cuccinelli has been asked for an opinion as to whether the state really has the legal position to adjudicate these disputes. While his opinion is pending, Mr. Cuccinelli has stated that he thinks the 2010 law is “too gentle” – perhaps indicating that he will opine that the state still cannot adjudicate the disputes. If the state can’t or won’t adjudicate the disputes then the landowners will have to retain counsel and sue the energy companies in court. Since many landowners are of limited means, the legal action may be prohibitively expensive. Therefore, the landowners may settle for less than the disputed amount rather than go to court.

    Legislation and Regulation: Some commenters on BaconsRebellion routinely call for more government regulation as something of a cure-all for many of today’s problems. I am not among those commenters. I fundamentally believe that our government, at both the federal and state level, is too dysfunctional to be given any more power. The sad situation regarding gas rights in Virginia is just one more example of an inept government in action. Twenty years after the state passed a law forcing landowners to sell their mineral rights on a pre-ordained pricing schedule the state is still unable to get many of the landowners their money. Disputes are often invented. The escrow accounts are essentially unaudited. Recent legislation is “too gentle”. However, there may be an answer. Our newly elected Attorney General has shown he has the courage to take on the status quo. Will he do the same here? Mr. Cuccinelli, we eagerly await your opinion.

  • “Streamlining” State Government

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    James A. Bacon


    Grabbing onto a popular, bi-partisan trend, Gov. Bob McDonnell is set to “streamline” Virginia government. He has named a 31-member panel headed by the man who led President George H.W. Bush’s unsuccessful reelection campaign in 1992.

    On one level, there are reasons to examine cutting state government. The state faces a multi-billion budget shortfall, which is part of the $60 billion national shortfall that states face after the Great Recession, according to stateline.org. So, it may make sense to make sure that taxpayers are getting a decent bang for their tax buck.
    To be sure, a number of states are doing this. In Washington state, Democrat Christine Gregoire, the governor, has been on a streamlining binge. She’s eliminated 75 state commissions and shut down 25 driver’s license centers, replacing them with online kiosks. Nebraska is thinking of merging staffs at community colleges. Massachusetts has merged four transportation authorities into two. And in Louisiana, the state is trying to require prison inmates to take high school GED training with the idea if they get a diploma while in the pen, they’ll likely get a job on the outside and be less likely to go back to prison and cost the state more money.
    As a Republican, McDonnell likes the idea of government streamlining because it fits his political philosophy of promoting limited government. This could be his defining issue after four months of debacles that have left Virginia a national laughingstock.
    Yet there are some limits to what can actually be done.
    The biggest is that Virginia already seems to be doing a pretty good job in state government. The Pew Center on the States rates the state A minus, along with Utah and Washington. The average score is a B minus. Neighbor Maryland got a B and North Carolina got a B minus. West Virginia got a C plus. The ratings deal with how well a state manages employees, budget, finance, information and infrastructure.
    If the Pew Center ratings are to be believed, we are not in a situation where a broken-down state government badly needs a house cleaning. This may be how McDonnell’s team projects the issue, along with their cronies in the conservative state media. But the fact remains that previous Democratic Governors Mark Warner and Tim Kaine did a pretty good job running the state. Pretending they didn’t is counter-productive.
    But, as noted before, McDonnell needs a defining issue if he is to have a political future. Streamlining seems a sensible way to go, especially since loose cannon Atty. Gen. Kenneth Cuccinelli has taken all of the high ground when it comes to social, hard-right issues. In fact, the “Cooch” is making McDonnell look like a buffoon by straying so far afield by suing the EPA on carbon dioxide and harassing the University of Virginia with a Joe McCarthy-style probe on global warming (more on that tomorrow).
    What the states need more than a blue ribbon commission on “streamlining” is one that creates more jobs. To his credit, McDonnell is on the case, but he’s efforts won’t even make recommendations until this fall.
    Badly-hit areas such as Southside and Southwest Virginia can’t wait that long. After all, McDonnell managed to pay up to $14 million in state money to get the HQ of defense contractor Northrop Grumman to move from Los Angeles to Northern Virginia. That involves all of 300 jobs in a firm that probably would have located to the state anyway.
    Peter Galuszka

  • New Face at Bacon’s Rebellion

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    James A. Bacon

    We have a new face here at Bacon’s Rebellion — we just can’t show it to you yet. But we will as soon as we can!

    I am winding up the writing of my book, “Boomergeddon,” and soon will begin the task of generating publicity for it. That task will entail building and maintaining a Boomergeddon website and blog, writing op-ed pieces and giving speeches to more or less anyone willing to listen to me. I have spent all too little time with the Bacon’s Rebellion blog as it is, and I will have even less time in the future.

    Therefore, I have invited the blogger known as Groveton to fill in for me. Regular readers of the blog know Groveton from his frequent comments. Among all the regular participants, he comes the closest to representing my perspective on many issues, and, hence, will provide a worthy philosophical balance to Peter G. and EMR. He will continue in the tradition of providing pointed political commentary on Virginia public policy in a civil spirit.

    Close readers of the blog know that Groveton is a senior executive with a major technology company with a presence in Northern Virginia. He attended Groveton High School and graduated from the University of Virginia. He travels around the world for his business, bringing valuable insight into the realities of competing in a global economy. Like me, he is a fiscal/economic conservative, a social moderate and a political independent. He is slowly but surely coming to see the light on transportation/land use issues. And he has a great sense of humor.

    In inviting Groveton to contribute to Bacon’s Rebellion, I have broken a cardinal rule: that all contributors should be open and transparent about who they are. Because of his employment with a prominent company, Groveton is faced with a devil’s choice: Either stay anonymous, or go public and pull his punches so as not to cause his employer any embarrassment. We reached a deal. Groveton will pull no punches.When he retires a year from now, he will go public, blogging under his real name and identity.

    Welcome aboard, Groveton.

  • Cheerleading Against Regulation

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    James A. Bacon


    You have to love the Richmond Times-Disgrace, err, Dispatch.

    It is a perpetual fount of cheer leading for the ruling elite with no regard for average folks. Its news sections take down, stenographic-style, the opinions of corporate pooh -bahs while their Sunday editorial pages are dominated by self-dealing lobbyists or non-profit bureaucrats telling us what a great job they are doing or TD publisher Tom Silvestri tapping out another bizarre tome about how busy and interesting and what a leader he is.
    In recent weeks, we had John A. Luke, head of paper-maker MeadWestvaco which relocated its HQ to Richmond a few years ago, tell us that government regulation is bad, bad bad. Luke, who avoids real interviews with journalists, didn’t bother to provide much detail at a country club speech other than mentioning President Barack Obama’s stimulus program and plans for a federal agency to protect consumers.
    Before, we had Bruce Whitehurst, head of the Virginia Bankers Association, complain that banking reform sought by Democrats such as Chris Dodd and Barney Frank comes with harmful new rules, chief among them an agency that would (gasp) actually protect consumers consumers from the predatory practices of banks.
    One wonders where Mr. Whitehurst was when Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, American International Group, Wachovia, Washington Mutual and many others either went down or had to find someone to buy them because of their incredibly bad choices in the subprime mortgage mess and other areas. Who got screwed here? The consumers, that’s who. They suffer 9.9 percent unemployment while the suits in C-Suites got gigantic golden parachutes not to mention a $700 billion plus federal bailout.
    Now comes the latest on the front pages of today’s Wall Street Journal. There is a fascinating front-page story that the federal Minerals Management Service, which may or may not be tasked with overseeing offshore oil rigs, has regularly conceded safety oversight to the drilling industry.
    Gov. Bob McDonnell and his group who want Deepwater Horizon rigs offshore of Virginia say that the industry is already well-regulated. The WSJ seems to beg to differ. MMS seems to follow a policy popular in the George W. Bush administration that federal regulators will step back and let the real experts — oil companies and their lobbyists — write the rules. No need to mention the result — millions of gallons of crude oil still pumping unhindered into the Gulf of Mexico in one of the worst environmental disasters in decades. And, compared to other countries with large offshore petroleum reserves, the U.S. is seen as a regulatory slouch.
    I remember during the Bush administration covering the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission. I did so when Christopher Cox, an amiable former California congressman and fan of free market maven Ayn Rand, was in charge. His mission was to lighten up on the Sarbanes-Oxley law that toughened up accounting after the 1990s Enron and WorldCom scandals.
    At the time, the John Lukes of the Corporate World were moaning big-time about Sarbox. Cox helped soften implementing it, which actually was effective and resulted in far-fewer forced restatements of company earnings. But the general feeling was light-touch regulation and letting the industry write the rules.
    Cox somehow was hard to find when the you know what hit the fan in 2008. As for the shareholders he was worn to protect, well, they lost trillions.
    Peter Galuszka

  • What Is It About Lacrosse?

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    James A. Bacon


    Lacrosse, the kind of hockey with sticks invented by Native Americans, has gained special popularity in Virginia, the Mid-Atlantic and parts of the South. Or make that notoriety.

    The game had been played for years at regional schools such as the U.S. Naval Academy and Johns Hopkins, but it only won broader popularity about 20 years ago.

    In my neighborhood, kids with “Duke” on their t-shirts walk up and down the streets chucking the little balls from basket to basket. When I went to my 40th high school reunion at a Jesuit prep school near Washington, the showcase event was a lacrosse game which we won, beating highly-ranked Landon 4 to 3. Back in the late 1960s when I was a student, football was king.
    But there seems to be something dark about the sport. A former Landon and University of Virginia lacrosse midfielder, George Huguely, faces first degree murder charges in the death of another Virginia lacrosse player, Yeardley Love. She was found beaten to death. Huguely’s lawyer says it was an accident.
    Just a few years back, lacrosse got another black eye at Duke, when a Durham stripper hired for a party falsely accused three Duke lacrosse players, including one from Landon, of rape. That case with a travesty with the university quickly damning the players. The local prosecutor lost his job and lawyer’s license for bungling the case and helping ruin the boys’ reputations.
    Even so, what is it about lacrosse?
    True, football players at Big 10 schools get into trouble with booze and girls. But there’s something about lacrosse’s recent popularity that seems to suggest that it is the sport of the rich kinds, or the new rich kids. If you handle the ball well, you’re on your way to a name school in the region, such as Virginia or Duke, and then on to a great law or medical school and a lucrative career.
    With that status in mind, maybe some of the kids think they are a little too special, a little too entitled. That might make some not hold back one’s temper with a girlfriend. Or do something tacky like hire a doped up stripper for an all-guys’ party.
    When I watched the Landon game last month, I found it fast and interesting. But I wish it had been football on a fall day.
    Peter Galuszka

  • Drill, Baby — Maybe

    Posted on

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    James A. Bacon

    The nation has watched in horror as the oil slick from the British Petroleum rig in the Gulf of Mexico approached the ecologically fragile wetlands of the Louisiana coast, and I found myself among those thinking, “We cannot let this happen in Virginia.”

    For once, I found myself agreeing with Peter, who wrote in a previous post: “Big Oil with its Big Money would not be the only industry along Virginia’s coast that [Gov. Bob McDonnell] is sworn to protect. Consider the fishing, tourism and commercial shipping sectors, not to mention the U.S. Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard which use offshore Virginia waters and pump in billions to the state’s economy.”

    But before we conclude that offshore drilling cannot possibly be conducted safely off the Virginia coast, let us bear in mind the vast differences between conditions in the Gulf and conditions in Virginia. The BP rig is drilling in 5,000 feet of deep water — pushing the technological envelope for operating in extreme conditions. Any drilling that takes place in Virginia would be on the continental shelf in shallow water (shallow by oil industry standards).

    Andrea Shea King posts on her website a fascinating description of the disaster, which details the engineering challenges of operating in deep water. The question for Virginians is this: How likely are these conditions likely to be replicated off our coast? To what extent do risks of oil spills increase with the depth of the ocean bed? Does it make sense for the state to permit drilling at certain depths with exceedingly low risk and to prohibit drilling at deeper depths where risks are greater?

    Assuredly, some people will use the BP disaster as an excuse to limit all drilling under all circumstances. Let’s keep our cool and ascertain all the facts before jumping to any conclusions.

  • Race and Class in Arizona

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    James A. Bacon

    There’s no getting past the racist implications of Arizona’s tough new immigration law that requires police to check the citizenship of anyone they suspect to be an illegal alien.
    Supporters of the law claim that it is badly misunderstood and that Arizona is only doing a job that the federal government has so far not done. Too many Mexican drug gang fire fights have been spilling into border U.S. states. And we in Virginia have had our own version of such a law — Prince William County’s three years ago that authorized police to check immigration status at all criminal arrests.
    Listen to the right wing media, such as American Family Radio, and you’ll hear of some “expert” tell use that Jose and Esmerelda want to sneak their 17 children north past the border so they can suck on the teat of U.S. social welfare programs, when, in fact, Hispanics tend to be among some of the hardest working and most conscientious people anywhere.
    But you simply can’t get past the white-skin, dark-skin elements of the immigration dilemma and it brings up some very ugly traits in American society that are both racist and anti-intellectual. Not that long ago, for instance, North Carolina forbade Catholics from holding public office and “No Nothings” went after Irish Catholic immigrants in the 1840s, followed by the Ku Klux Klan in later years.
    Immigration laws in the early 20th century set “limits” for what the dominant White Protestant power elite considered “inferior” races such as Italians, Irish, Poles, Croatians, Mexicans, Japanese, Chinese and so on. As for African-Americans, the record is incredibly evil. I read on the obit page last week in The New York Times about a champion female diver who was denied use of a swimming club at a ritzy San Francisco hotel in the 1940s because she was half English and half Filipino. Leading colleges held Jews to “quotas” until the mid-1900s.
    Turning now to Arizona, one also finds a strange history. To be sure, I have never been there but I have been to neighboring states. For centuries, of course, the land that is now Arizona was dominated by Native American tribes. One of the first Western explorers was non-other than an Hispanic — a Spanish friar named Fray Marcos de Niza. He was wandering around the area in the 1530s, which is quite a bit earlier than the “White” Englishmen who founded Jamestown and Plymouth in the 1600s, or even, for that matter, Sir Walter Raleigh.
    Like many areas in the U.S. Southwest, Arizona’s culture was dominated by the dark-skinned Spanish and Mexicans. An 1860 census showed that Arizona was still predominately Native American and was so until 1912 when it became a state.
    The big change came in the 1960s when thousands of “White” Americans from the Mid-west and Northeast, many of them retirees from well-paying white collar or highly-skilled blue collar jobs, flooded into to new “communities” to take advantage of the dry, warm climate. They brought with them car-centric urban sprawl and golf courses that demanded millions of gallons of scare water that ended up changing the micro-climate by making it more humid and destroying one of the reasons so many came to Arizona in the first place.
    These “Whites” also wanted to shape the state’s culture around what it was like back in suburban Detroit or Chicago or St. Louis or New York. They wanted everyone to speak only English, as they did, and conform with the small family, consumption-oriented lifestyle that they loved, along with white bread, schmaltzy programs such as Lawrence Welk on TV.
    Now we find that Arizona is a “crisis” of illegal immigration and the culprits (no getting around this one, sorry) are “brown-skinned Latinos who actually have been in those parts quite a bit longer that the “come-here” and “White” retirees. So, we have a new and hateful law that will probably spur a more conservative federal law if and when it ever comes. The last attempt at one, supported by President George W. Bush by the way, couldn’t clear Congress. President Obama has been too sidetracked by health care and financial regulation to focus much on it yet.
    Whatever happened in Prince William and can it be a guide? Consider this blog by Paige Winfield Cunningham in The Washington Post.
    At first, she notes, Hispanics, the target of the law, fled PWC. English as a Second Language classes had been growing by 1,500 students a year but quickly fell to 760 before growing again. Surveys show that Hispanics overwhelmingly support local police but did not after the law.
    As for the big crime crackdown that was anticipated, well, it turned out to be somewhat underwhelming. Of 12,839 criminal arrests in 2009, only 6 percent involved illegal immigrants.
    Peter Galuszka

Now Available

Book cover of 'Dust Mites: A Second American Revolution' by James A. Bacon, featuring astronauts planting a flag with a blue and white emblem on a lunar landscape, with Earth visible in the background.
For sale on Amazon.com

The year: 2075. The American colonies on the Moon are getting restless under Washington’s tyrannical rule….

This second edition of “Dust Mites” has a snazzy new cover, includes helpful lunar maps, and is 5,000 words tighter than the original. The sequel, “Trogs,” is scheduled for publication this summer.

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Bacon’s Rebellion is Virginia’s leading politically non-aligned portal for news, opinions and analysis about state, regional and local public policy. Read more about us here.

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