Bacon's Rebellion

My 24-year-old daughter, Sara Bacon, went to the polls in Richmond yesterday to vote. She’d never had much interest in politics before, but she’d made the effort this year to research both of the presidential candidates and make a choice. But when she arrived at the polling station, she was informed that there was no record of her registration. She was not allowed to cast her ballot.

Sara drove downtown to City Hall and talked to someone in the registrar’s office. Here’s her reconstruction of what happened. After graduating from college, Sara had moved out to Wyoming. Because she had no intention of relocating there permanently and thought that she could move back home at any time, she maintained her official residence in Richmond. She kept a Virginia driver’s license, paid Virginia taxes and registered to vote in Richmond.

At some point during her two-year stay in Wyoming, the city sent her a notice to serve on a jury. Sara sent back the form stating that she was living outside the state and unable to comply. Then, without notifying her, the city purged her name from the voting rolls. Sara returned to Richmond in August, staying in her mother’s house where she had grown up and having no basis whatsoever to suspect that she was no longer registered to vote.

Now, the United States is a mobile society, lots of people move, and municipal governments do need to purge their voter rolls. I have no problem with that. I don’t even have a problem with the city’s decision to purge Sara based on her inability to report for jury duty. But I have a very big problem with the fact that the city never informed her that she was no longer registered. If she had known, she could have re-registered when she moved back to Richmond in August. But there was nothing that anyone could do on voting day to fix the problem.

I hear a lot of loose talk on television and in the newspapers about “voter suppression,” usually with the implication that evil forces are trying to reduce the turnout of minority voters. My hunch is that bureaucratic inertia is responsible for supressing far more votes than the machinations of one political party or the other.

The city of Richmond elected a new mayor yesterday — Dwight Jones. He comes across as a reasonable man. Let us hope that he enacts a very simple reform: ensure that voters are informed in writing when they’ve been purged from the voting rolls. Otherwise, taxpaying citizens can add one more reason to move to suburban counties: ensuring themselves the right to vote.

Tuesday night’s triumph for Barack Obama and the Democratic Party is truly a turning point for the nation and the Old Dominion, even though saying so sounds as trite as a newspaper headline.

For Virginia, it was the first time that the state voted for a Democratic president since 1964 and, in doing so; it has expunged a truly ugly chapter in the state’s history.

True, Virginia did elect the first African-American governor in 1989, but in election after election for 44 years, Virginia voters stuck with Republican Party strategies that all too often were based on wedge issues involving racism and reaction.

The trend kicked after 1964 when Virginia last voted for a Democratic presidential candidate. Since then, voting seemed a knee-jerk move against racial integration of society and schools. According to Bob Moser, author of “Blue Dixie:” “It’s true that Democrats were bound to take a hit in the South after LBJ signed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts of 1964 and 1965, which ended all forms of legal segregation and doomed various schemes – literacy tests, violent intimidation – that had suppressed black registration ands turnout.”

Unfortunately, Virginia then bought into every retrograde political agenda the GOP could come up with. There was Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” which was based on building up a sense of white, working class despair over the tumultuous social and racial upheavals of the 1960s. This was the first organized attempt by Republicans to create a “Silent Majority” that was the real keeper of the American faith, sort of like Sarah Palin telling residents in a small North Carolina town that they were the “true Americans.”

And on we went. When Jimmy Carter carried the South in 1976, Virginia didn’t go with him. The Old Dominion bought into the Reagan revolution hook, line and sinker. Even though Reagan, who had some good ideas, ended up being the tremendous government spender he supposedly despised. Reagan was a riddle of contradictions – a Hollywood actor, divorcee and non-church-goer, who, as Moser points out, cast himself as an authentic, family-oriented and religious guy.

Virginia’s Republican politicians have tried to ride the Reagan wave as far as they could up the beach. Well into the 1990s, we had cowboy-booted George “Aw Shucks” Allen coming after welfare queens and building prisons and having his insulting macacca moment. Former Governor Jim Gilmore made a fetish out of his destructive car tax while making hash of the state’s budget.

With Democrat Mark Warner, the state got a big signal of its momentous demographic shift. Here was an out-of-stater living in Northern Virginia, whose economic boom was drawing in thousands of new people with new ideas, making it big in the free-market that GOPers claimed to so love. No big surprise, but Warner easily crushed Gilmore’s pointless run for senator, giving the state two Democratic senators for the first time in years.

Obama’s story is an almost magical one. He’s a half-white, half-black man who has just won in a state that as recently as 1967, back when I was in high school, made it illegal for different races to marry. Boasting of strong oratory skills and superb campaign organization, he took on old Democratic icons such as the Clintons, beat them and then won in Virginia.

True, it wasn’t a crushing defeat. Obama didn’t take much of the rural state or stubborn conservative strongholds such as my home county of Chesterfield. But big, populous counties that used to vote strictly Republican, such as Henrico, Loudoun and Prince William, went Democratic. More predictably Democratic cities such as Norfolk and Richmond did, too.

Once again, here’s evidence of the demographic shifts that have changed the face of Virginia. And it shows just how badly the Republicans have stumbled after eight disastrous years of George Bush and, after 44 years, just how they are exhausted they are of ideas.

Voters are saying that simply running against abortion, for guns and against immigrants won’t cut it any more. Serving up an under qualified “You Betcha” candidate whose only real asset is her gender won’t cut it, either. The economy is a mess and the financial markets face their worst crisis since the 1930s. We’re still stuck in two messy wars. Luckily, we have a new president whose message is hope and inclusion, not wedge issues. And voters are not stupid.

Peter Galuszka

Fool that I am, I thought I’d beat the crowd to the polls this morning. I showed up at the Tuckahoe precinct voting station in Henrico County around 6 a.m. only to be greeted by a long line snaking out of the building and into the parking lot. I guess a few other people were thinking the same way. Fortunately, the voting proceeded fairly quickly, thanks to the addition of extra voting machines and voting officials. I was out of there 50 minutes later.

Autumn in Chesterfield County has finally taken on its dusky, orange and yellow beauty, just in time for tomorrow’s election which promises to be historic.

Early in the morning, I’ll go down to the rural Methodist Church, slide past the aggressive campaign workers, show my driver’s license and do my duty.

Here in largely white and Republican Chesterfield County, lawns are dotted with blue and white McCain-Palin signs. They far outnumber Obama-Biden ones but there are a few here and there.

There’s also a bit of tension in the air as the McCain supporters sense defeat. Virginia could very well go blue for the first time in decades. GOP conservativism here has morphed into a sense of entitlement in Chesterfield where rich neighbrohoods slip into the old, rural county. To have a nice house and an SUV seems to be a badge of membership in the GOP.

Yet, one can’t shake the nastiness. A few examples:

Not very far from me is the home of a retired African-American minister who is an Obama supporter. His large Obama sign in his yard was ripped down and a Confederate flag was placed in its spot. The police are investigating.

At the corner of a winding road that I travel to take my daughter to her school bus stop, a homeowner has placed a large McCain-Palin sign right on the edge of his property. It tends to block the view at the intersection where you stop at the stopsign. You have to pull your car out a bit to see past the sign. On at least one occasion, someone has taken a razor to the sign, but it keeps coming back.

Sunday afternoon I went to my gym. I was going to do the aerobics machines, then some weights and then a few laps in the pool. Some treadmills have little televisions over them — maybe seven in all. That day, there were two other middle aged men on machine. Fox News was on two monitors — ESPN was on the other.

I picked a treadmill near a screen with Fox. I dislike Fox News since I find its “fair and balanced” coverage anything but. I tried to switch it, but couldn’t. So I shut it off. After I did so, the other two middle aged guys started screaming at me, even though Fox was still beaming from another monitor.

I wondered: is it illegal to turn off Fox News in Chesterfield County? I understand from gym staffers that the TV conflict is especially bad in the early morning when runners one-up each other between Fox and MSNBC.

On Friday, I attended a luncheon at the World Affairs Council in downtown Richmond. The speaker weas the ambassador from France and at my table sat a woman who had recently arrived and was teaching international relations at Virginia Commonwealth Unuiversity. Her family had come from Spain but she had spent a good bit of time at Baton Rouge at Louisiana State University.

I asked her how she liked Richmond. Mixed, she said. When she arrived three years ago from Baton Rouge, she tried to register to vote. Each time ended with a frustrating failure. Finally she went to the main voting registration place. She was told that “We don’t want any illegal imnmigrants.” She told me: “I was outraged, I was born in the states.”

Odd. Here’s a woman, a U.S.-born citizen, with three graduate degrees. She’s obviously intelligent. And she has to endure racist discrimination for no reason. At least immigrant-bashing seems to have died down in the campaign.

But the season is still beautiful. And, tomorrow, I think there’s going to be a big change for the better.

Peter Galuszka

In my new capacity as SVP-publishing at The Boomer Project, one of my jobs is to scan the horizon for emergent trends relating to the sociology and psychology of Baby Boomers and other generations (Silent Generation, GenX and GenY) and blog about them on the Boomer Consumer blog. Those insights, and those culled by Boomer Project principals Matt Thornhill and John Martin from their years of study on the subject, are distilled into columns that run biweekly in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Our very own James A. Bacon wrote a blog about a week ago predicting tough times for Hampton Roads.

Although Jim claims to be independent, that’s BS. We really know where his sympathies lie. Basically, Jim believes that an Obama win will be bad for Tidewater. He wrote:

“I’m not making a partisan statement or casting a value judgment here. My point is not to dredge up the rights and wrongs of U.S. foreign and military policy. I’m simply observing that the Elephant Clan, for better or worse, funnels more money into the military than does the Donkey Clan. Commuities dependent upon military spending, such as Hampton Roads, fare better during Elephant Clan administrations.”

Well, that’s a very simple, pat and intuitive piece of analysis.

Maybe too simple, pat and intuitive.

The Virginian-Pilot reports today that Obama is outstripping McCain in defense contributions. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Obama has received $870,165 to McCain’s $647.313.

What? After all, McCain’s an Annapolis grad, career Navy, former aviator and Vietnam POW. Obama has zero military experience.

According to military analyst Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, Obama and McCain really aren’t that far apart on defense issues after you extract Iraq. Both candidates are targetting excess defense spending for weapons systems we don’t need. If our threats are going to be Islamic insurgents, do we need ultra high performance F-22 Raptors, unless, of course, Putin starts a serious conflict or gives Sukhoi 35s to Hugo Chavez?

So, it looks like Hampton Roads will be in some jeopardy, regardless of who wins Tuesday. Thompson, hwoever, believes that jobs at Northrup Grumman are safe.

So, Jim Bacon is half right. He’s correct that defense will take a hit; but he’s wrong with assuming that it will be a worse under Obama. Military contractors obviously don’t think so. Once again, we’re seeing this campaign turn old chesnuts, particularly those of the Republican variety, on their heads.

And, please, Jim, can we drop this “Donkey Clan” and “Elephant Clan” crap? We need to cleanse the world of all-too-cute Risse-speak.

Peter Galuszka

Some of you have noticed that the format of the Bacon’s Rebellion blog has changed. Here’s the story: Blogger “upgraded” its software and induced me to incorporate the new features. In so doing, the blog roll, “about us” text and other features that had been part of the old blog disappeared. My HTML skills are minimal, so it will take a process of trial and error to figure out how to restore the missing elements. I will endeavor to do so when I have the time.

Here’s a puzzle. Why is it that Virginia has so many cosmopolitan advantages useful in the global economy yet there is so much reactionary xenophobia particularly in areas where the thinking should be more advanced?

The Old Dominion is next door to the nation’s capital, has a plethora of U.S. government and non-governmental agencies, top-ranked ports, military, diplomatic missions and vibrant economic sectors despite the financial meltdown.

Yet, it also has some of the worst examples of racist xenophobia. Some examples: Prince Williams County’s frisk-everyone, anti-Hispanic laws; plans to build an immigrant GULAG in Farmville and (thankfully) now dead plans my my home county of Chesterfield to “identify” illeagl immigrants who are only Hispanic and rank in guess-work numbers far beyond reality.

So, we owe it to Richmond magazine for its perceptive cover package this month on how the foreign-born influence Greater Richmond. This worthy project has plenty of personal tales of living abroad and ending up here. But the one item that attracts my interest is a detailed graphic by artist Chris Obrion with whom I used to work at Virginia Business some years ago.

Chris’s work points out the many and varied local companies owned by foreigners. Germany has 32 firms in the area that employ 4,241. Next are the French with five firms and 1,617 workers. The U.K. is next with 27 firms and 1,327 workers. The Japanese have 18 firms with 1,072 workers. Mexico has two firms employing 131 and Greece has one firm employing 55.

To be sure, some of the foreign firms are having big problems, such as German-owned chip maker Qimonda which has 2,275 local workers and will lay off about 1,200. But the rest seem healthy. French -owned Alstom Power services and repairs turbines in Chesterfield and Maruchan Virginia Inc., owned by Japanese businessmen, makes noodle soup.

Richmond magazine lays all of this out for you in a way that impresses based on its sheer mass. It makes you wonder why so many politicians, especially Republicans in wealthy white suburban areas, are so keen on creating suspicion about foreigners and placing every barrier they can think of in their path. Doing so somehow makes them seem more “American” and therefore vote-worthy. But all it does is show how little they know about the world today and how much they are hurting the United States and Virginia in the name of waving the flag.

Peter Galuszka

Last week Thomas L. Friedman’s most recent book was at the top of WaPo’s nonfiction best sellers list. This week it is number four.

Footnote: EMR got his hands on a nonsanctioned lite book –a LARGE PRINT version – so he went to the Greater Warrenton Borders for one that is easier to read. In these times of financial crisis when citizens really need to understand how the world works, two copies of Friedman’s book were on a shelf in the way-way-back. What was in front piled in great stacks? Fiction, political hack screeds and in-depth reporting on the same insights found in tabloids and Parade: “Daniel Craig is more than a tough guy.”

Friedman’s title, Hot, Flat and Crowed, is provocative, but there are several problems of Vocabulary.

HOT

“HOT” refers to Global Climate Change. It plays to his subtitle” “Why We Need a Green Revolution – And How it Can Renew America.”

There is some debate about whether the earth is really getting hotter – most of the negative assessments come from proponents of Business-As-Usual and from “principled-conservatives” which makes this perspective suspect from the start.

There is even more heated discussion about whether human action is a driver / accelerator of Global Climate Change but Friedman seems to have no doubts.

As EMR has said over and over both the existence of a warming trend and the causes are fine to debate but the larger reality is that does not make any difference.

What ever the trend and whatever the cause, the “alarmists” who have a problem with Global Warming and decry the human impact on Climate Change are calling for actions that for the most part are needed for other very sound economic, social and physical reasons. Jim Bacon and EMR agree on this since he is more of a skeptic on the issue of causation.

Two other thoughts on HOT:

EMR has been carefully watching the well documented melting of glaciers for the past 60-plus years in his home Community – a disaggregated and very Beta Community in the Northern Rocky Mountain Urban Support Region.

Second, one of the biggest non-economic and non-mysterious health problems is that people go to the hospital for a well known cause and come out with an gratuitous infection. Peyton and Kellen had infections in the last few weeks.

EMR spent some time in the Greater Warrenton-Fauquier Community Hospital last week. (“If you want to do great things in your world, spend some time in ours,” US Navy)

It became obvious – while waiting for the medical staff to assembly to carry out a routine exploratory procedure, and while covered with a sheet and pre-warmed double blanket – the special-ops area of the hospital was COLD. The doctors and nurses were wearing two and three (visible) layers. The Hispanic lady who was scrubbing equipment looked like what was once called an “Eskimo” but is now call an “Inuit,” (aka, Aemai – An Earlier North American Immigrant.)

Why so cold in the Hospital? Do infections spread more easily in warmer temperatures? Having spent a month or more in the subtropics for over 30 years – and some time in hospitals on
Tortola and St. Vincent – EMR suspects the answer is “yes.”

Based on direct experience, EMR sees no reason to question the predominance of scientific evidence on both warming and cause but as noted above, that is not the real issue.

So HOT is problematic, However, HOTTER or not, what is important is that what is recommended to stop accelerating Global Warming makes sense to achieve a sustainable trajectory for society. Do we really need to fuss over “HOT” to make better decisions about locations and the allocation of resources?

FLAT

Friedman has ended the lives of thousands of acres of forest in order to tell readers of serial editions an earlier book about FLAT. By FLAT he means “Globality: Competing with Everyone From Everywhere for Everything.” – to use Sirkin, et. al.’s title and explanation – is making the world seem “flat.” As Supercapitalism makes very clear Globality and FLAT is not a good thing from many perspectives.

The fact is, the most important thing is NOT the price of tea in China.

The most important thing for any citizen is the safety, happiness and well being of the other citizens in ones Cluster, the Clusters that make up their Neighborhood, the Neighborhoods that make up their Village…

The complexity of Globality is an excuse for avoiding what is really important. For this reason FLAT is confusing and the analogy is way over-used.

CROWDED

It is with “Crowded” that Friedman goes off the rail.

He fails to understand that “Crowded” is an variable that is dependent upon human settlement patterns. What seems to be “Crowded” is due to a dysfunctional distribution of human activity and the failure to allocate resources equitably.

Six and a half billion people is not beyond the carrying capacity of the Earth.

Six and a half billion citizens is beyond the carrying capacity of Earth if they all were to consume as much per capita as those in the US of A believe to be their birthright.

The primary driver of unsustainable per capita consumption is dysfunctional settlement pattern.

Of course with fewer citizens on Earth, everyone could enjoy more per capita consumption but that is a different issue.

Freedman sees the problem of CROWDED as being due to the expansion of the “middle class.” Never mind that the Middle Class disappeared over the past six decades.

What he means is that there has been an expansion of expectations and consumption of some at the upper levels of the Ziggurat in all the richest nation-states.

It is now quite clear that this level of consumption cannot be sustained even by a super fortunate minority. The cheap resources – natural capital – is becoming more dear and fewer and fewer can afford it.

The critical problem is that a lot of those who are not yet Mass OverConsuming have been told by pandering politicians that they deserve to achieve levels of consumption that they see in ads and in more-real-than-life streaming and screaming images spread around the Globe.

The Business-As-Usual advocates confuse the comfort and consumption of “me and my friends” at the top of the Ziggurat with the welfare and sustainability of an “advanced” technological society.

A green revolution will not solve this problem. It will take a gray-matter revolution.

To make matters worse, driven by Business-As-Usual and MainStream Media, the only interest in “green” that has been discovered outside small, intentional communities has been Green Greed – Buy our product and feel good about consumption.

In a rational world, ads for a “full-size, luxury SUV Hybrid” would be considered pornography.

Energy, technology and meat along with Large, Private Vehicles and Scattered McMansions will never again be cheap.

That is especially true if the there is a delusion that it is possible to fuel, inform, over-feed, provide Mobility, Access and Shelter for six and a half billion citizens with democratic governance and market economies.

EMR