tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31082567265950485812024-03-13T22:35:54.837-07:00Virginia PunditVirginia Pundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14120407478348260731noreply@blogger.comBlogger81125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3108256726595048581.post-7115233389149532014-11-24T11:51:00.001-08:002014-11-24T11:51:15.125-08:00Obama derangement syndromeI've got some friends on the right who are really going to miss Barack Obama.<br />
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Without him, they'll have nothing to talk about.<br />
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Granted that the GOP found the last two-term Democratic president so illegitimate they thought they could impeach him for nothing, but not even Sick Willie roused Republican ire the way Obama does.<br />
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He's simultaneously a foreigner, a Nazi, a socialist, a tyrant, a traitor, a coddler of welfare cheats, Muslim, the Anti-Christ and a disrespecter of the flag. And it doesn't matter how many times any of these things are disproved, they never go away.<br />
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(By the way, if he's a socialist, Obama is the worst socialist ever. In his term, the stock market and corporate profits have skyrocketed, the unemployment rate has fallen without increasing wages for working people, we bailed out the Wall Street companies that engineered the Great Recession, without imposing any new laws that would keep them from toppling the economy again and the disparity in wealth between the 1% and the rest of us has increased. Worst. Socialist. Ever. Maybe he should ask some tips from Sen. Bernie Sanders or the Nordic countries on how to do socialism right.) <br />
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It's Obama derangement syndrome.<br />
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It can make even the most sensible Republican, break out in spittle-flying, Tea- Party- worthy craziness. <br />
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Now, look, there's no question that Bush Derangement Syndrome was a real thing too.<br />
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I know Democrats who believe George W. Bush was behind 9/11 and who think he invaded Iraq, for the oil.<br />
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(That's nuts, not even a member of the Bush family could invade a country for oil and see gas prices domestically climb close to $4. Wanting the country's oil would be a more sensible reason to invade Iraq than any the W Administration ever put forward. In fact, I suspect there's pretty simple reason-- Saddam Hussein tried to have W's father - the sensible President Bush - assassinated. Regime change in Iraq was the subject of a meeting on the <i>first day </i>of W's term of office, long before 9/11. Hey, I'm a vengeful guy myself, I can respect that.)<br />
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But no matter how bad criticism of GWB got, it was never as ugly as what Obama has faced. I don't remember Democrats throwing the word "traitor" around. There were a few undeserved Nazi references, but Obama has faced more. And there certainly wasn't the amount of racism that's been thrown around. I'm not saying anyone who criticizes Obama is racist. There are still real policy differences between the left and the right, and it's fair game to comment on them. However, Obama's presidency has apparently given free reign for down-low racists to emerge from underneath their rocks and engage in the kind of hate speech that most of us though died out in the 1960s.<br />
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And sensible Republicans and Conservatives should be -- but have not been so far -- the first people to step up and denounce that rhetoric. Just as many of us - and I include myself in this - feel that moderate Muslims have a duty to step up and denounce the actions that Jihadist Muslims commit in the name of their religion -- conservatives have the the duty to step up and denounce hate speech camouflaging itself with their ideology.<br />
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And they should relax and breathe. Liberal lived through Bush II, Conservatives will live through Obama's terms.<br />
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<br />Virginia Pundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14120407478348260731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3108256726595048581.post-4333479675430844832014-11-20T11:26:00.000-08:002014-11-20T11:26:21.157-08:00Throw backs? Why not just throw them away?So..I'm watching a football game last weekend and the Green Bay Packers are on and it was their week to wear their "throw back" uniforms. They should have thrown them away.<br />
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The uniforms were dark green with an orange circle on the chest inside of which was the player's number. Plain orange helmet, which wasn't authentic because it had a face mask attached.<br />
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In that it was similar to the Steelers' even more horrid throw back uniforms, from the previous week, which were black with yellow stripes making them look like the Pittsburgh Bumble Bees.<br />
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Usually when teams plan their throw back uniforms -- which is basically a gimmick to sell more merchandise -- the reach back to the uniforms they wore in a successful era in the team's history.<br />
So in the Packers' case the logical choice would be the Vince Lombardi era of the 1960's and the Steelers' logical choice would be the Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris multiple Super Bowl days of the '70s.<br />
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The problem is the two teams are still wearing those uniforms. They found something that looked good and stuck with it.<br />
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So for throw back uniforms they gone waaaaay back -- to the 1930's. In the Packers' case that makes sense -- they had a championship team back then, one of the strongest franchises in the league -- thus explaining how a nothing town on the "frozen tundra" of Wisconsin, with a population about half the size of Richmond or Arlington still has an NFL franchise. In the Steelers' case it doesn't make much sense..they were pretty awful from the 30's to the 70's. In fact, those jerseys may date to a time when the team was still called the Pirates.<br />
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There are other teams with the same dilemma. The Cowboys' throw back uniforms are from their inaugural season in the league, when they got beaten like a red-headed stepchild. By the time the team got good in the mid-60's, they'd changed to the familiar uniforms they wear now.<br />
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And, of course the Cleveland Browns' uniforms have been pretty much the same (boring) since they were formed in the 1940's. I think they may have worn white helmets at the start. The Colts have been wearing pretty much the same uniform since the Johnny Unitas era...despite the fact that they were stolen and moved to the Midwest.<br />
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There are a couple of teams that should ditch their present uniforms and go back to their old look. Three of the AFL's founding teams -- the San Diego Charges, New England Patriots (remember with the minute man snapping the ball on the helmet?) and the Buffalo Bills should go back to their roots.<br />
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And the St. Louis Rams should go back to the classy blue and white they wore in Los Angeles .<br />
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Maybe, they should go back to Los Angeles too, but that's a topic for another day.<br />
Virginia Pundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14120407478348260731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3108256726595048581.post-70842405759415771542014-11-17T11:18:00.000-08:002014-11-17T11:18:20.820-08:00Jargon makes the world go roundOne of the occupational hazards of being a journalist is drowning in jargon.<br />
We have our own jargon in the newsroom and reporters -- much to their editors' dismay often begin speaking or writing in the jargon of those they cover.<br />
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Newspapers themselves are very jargon driven.<br />
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For instance, most members of the public who've heard the term probably think the first paragraph of a news story is the "lead." Actually, it's the lede.<br />
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A story that totally flatters its subject is a "puff piece." One that takes a more analytic view of an issue, examining not just what happened, but what it all<i> means</i>, is "think piece" or a "thumbsucker" or, due to the days that newspapers usually have the space for them,"a weekender."<br />
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Reporters learn the difference between "on background," "not for attribution" and "off the record." Background basically means the source is educating you on how something works, but doesn't want his name or his agency's name mentioned. Not for attribution means "you can't say I said that," leading to the use of "highly placed sourses." Off the record means, "you can't use this." Off the record information is more useful than you might think, because it's easier to get someone to go "on the record" about when you already seem to know about it.<br />
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I once had an editor who said that if there was one thing he hoped the general public never new about the newsroom it was the kind of black humor we engaged in. That leads to slogans like "if it bleeds it leads" and newsroom comments like "Did anyone die? It's a better story if someone died."<br />
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"Man in the street" stories are those where a reporter goes out and talks to random folks in the community about what they think about an issue in the news. Reporters generally hate man in the street stories. In Williamsburg I go to Duke of Gloucester Street for man in the street stories. When I worked in Lynchburg, we used to call them "Man in the mall" stories because that was the easiest place to find crowds of pedestrians.<br />
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A "sob sister" story (this term is dieing out) is a feature meant to tug at the heartstrings -- kids with incurable diseases, poverty stricken moms struggling to raise their children right while working three jobs -- they usually run in the Lifestyles section, which newspapers were still calling the "Women's pages," well into the 1980s.<br />
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The most likely reporters to get sucked in by their sources and start spouting jargon are crime reporters.<br />
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Cover police for awhile and you start calling the defendant the "perpetrator" or "perp." Editors always remove this from copy, but the terminology has infected them as well. Because when the police bring the accussed to court, that's a "perp walk" and if you can get a "perp shot" of that, it will illustrate the story well. The newest piece of cop jargon that the media can't quit using is "person of interest." It means "suspect," except that it uses more space.<br />
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Once the case gets to court, there's more jargon. Court reporters end up knowing a lot of things that the average person does not, so editors have to make sure you explain things like "Alford Plea" (I don't admit I'm guilty but I admit that you have enough evidence to convict me. So let's cut a deal and save the taxpayers the cost of a trial), the difference between malicious wounding and unlawful wounding (One requires that the accused actually have malicious intent.) and the exception to the hearsay rule (past statements of the accused are not hearsay).<br />
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The legislature is also a great source of jargon. Covering the legislature, reporters learn the difference between P.B.I. (Passed by indefinitly. "We killed your bill with extreme prejudice"), tabled ("We killed your bill gently") and carried over to the next session ("We've sentenced your bill to a lingering death.")<br />
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Once, on the "Night of Long Knives" -- the last scheduled meeting of the Courts of Justice Committee before the deadline for acting on bills -- a delegate said, "Mr. Chairman, I notice that we have a lot of bills that have been laid on the table. I move that we throw the table out the window."<br />
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Veterans of the legislature also know why there are almost no "No" votes cast in judicial elections in the legislature, no matter how bad the nominee is. Dates from when the vast majority of the General Assembly were lawyers. No one wants to tick off a judge he may end up facing in court. So, the custom is, that if you oppose the nominee, you just don't vote. Since it requires 51 votes in the House and 21 votes in the Senate to elect a judge, an abstention is the same as voting "No," without being nasty about it.<br />
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The session of the General Assembly also have their own language.<br />
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For instance "Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the learned gentleman from the other side would yield for question?" means "Mr. Speaker, if that idiot would shut up, I'd explain to him what his bill <i>really </i>does." <br />
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Questions come in two flavors -- regular questions and "friendly" questions. Friendly questions are generally much more hostile than regular questions.<br />
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Amendments also come in flavors. In this case though a "friendly amendment" really is friendly, it's an attempt to make the bill better. An unfriendly amendment is generally meant to make the bill so bad even an idiot wouldn't vote for it.<br />
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There are also "technical amendments" those are amendments that just fix typos or correct wrong code section cites, etc. Most are truly technical, but it pays to read them through none the less. They are written by politicians after all. <br />
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The Senate, is less fun than the House of Delegates but has its own peculiar customs. One is that, if two senators represent different parts of the same jurisdiction they are called "the senior Senator from..." and "the junior Senator from...." (I don't know what they do in Fairfax, which I'm sure has more than two senators). Nothing wrong with that. Although I often felt it was rude to the late Sen. Yvonne Miller to call her the "senior Senate from Norfolk."<br />
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Currently I cover a municipal government and tourism. And I've had to learn fresh sets of jargon. I now know more about zoning than anyone who only owns one house needs to know. Houses, of course, are right out. What's in is "mixed-use developments".-- that means you live at the shopping center. I also know the difference between "by right" development (that's development that follows all the zoning rules) and SUP (special use permit) development (breaks all the very specific rules we set up, but if the project is big enough we'll be happy to ignore them). I also have to deal with budgets fairly often, but budget language at the local level isn't all that much different than at the state level, except that there are fewer zeroes.<br />
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The tourism beat has taught me more about the hotel industry than I ever wanted to know. What' s a healthy occupancy rate for hotel room nights? Close to 60 percent, which Williamsburg hasn't reached in years. I also have learned terms like RevPAR. That's revenue per available room, sort of a basic measure of the health of the hotel industry.<br />
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This ran on a lot longer than I wanted it to, but I had fun.<br />
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I leave you now with this :<br />
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--30-- </div>
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<br />Virginia Pundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14120407478348260731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3108256726595048581.post-10214912750862484622014-11-03T08:45:00.002-08:002014-11-03T08:45:39.546-08:00Warner will hang on, despite PuckettgateThere's no question that Mark Warner screwed up big time by injecting himself into the struggle over State Sen. Phil Puckett's resignation.<br />
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But it doesn't seem likely that it will cost him his Senate seat tomorrow.<br />
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Averaging the last two independent polls in the race, puts Warner ahead with 48% of the vote to Republican Ed Gillespie's 38% and Libertarian Robert Sarvis' 4%. That leaves 10% undecided, which is a figure I very much doubt.<br />
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It doesn't look, from this vantage point, like anybody on either side is very engaged in this, Virginia's off-off year election, except rabid partisans.<br />
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That means voters will probably go with who they know. They know Warner. They don't know Gillespie.<br />
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My prediction? Warner 52%, Gillespie 44%, Sarvis 4%. <br />
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That's a closer election than Warner anticipated going into this year. I don't think there's any question that his involvement in the Puckett matter -- he was trying talk a Democratic state senator from resigning and throwing the majority in the Senate to the Republicans, which meant that a Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act was dead -- has damaged Warner's brand. Republicans reportedly offered Sen. Phil Puckett a possible seat on the the Tobacco Commission and confirmation of his daughter as a judge. Warner, one of a cadre of Democrats trying to keep Puckett from resigning, reportedly mentioned that Puckett's daughter might be a candidate for a federal judgeship.<br />
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State Republicans, stung by heir own ethic scandals involving Gov. Bob McDonnell, former Del. Phil Hamilton and current Del. Terry Kilgore, who is credited/blamed with offering Puckett inducements to resign, jumped all over Warner's role in Puckettgate -- as they should have. <br />
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Republicans nationally are pushing to take back the Senate -- Warner's seat was not one they really targeted. He was seen as a strong, popular incumbent and they had enough opportunities to pick up seats that they could take control without winning Warner's seat.<br />
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And, I think they will. But, whoever wins the Senate, it will be by a very small margin. Probably continuing the gridlock we've been seeing in Washington for at least the last six years.<br />
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<br />Virginia Pundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14120407478348260731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3108256726595048581.post-1982768539586439532014-10-29T16:44:00.001-07:002014-10-29T16:44:32.070-07:00Hurting Yourself For A LivingI'm off about baseball again, because politics is making my skin crawl again.<br />
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And something I saw during the World Series gave me a painful feeling as well.<br />
It was a slow motion replay of San Francisco Giants pitcher Madison Bumgarner throwing his slider.<br />
It hurt me to watch somebody's elbow turn that way and reminded me how unnatural pitching a baseball -- as opposed to just throwing one -- is. It hurt my arm to try to mimic that motion slowly.<br />
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And that's why the starting pitcher only goes every fourth or fifth day -- he needs the time off to heal the damage he's done to himself.<br />
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That's why Carl Hubbell, baseball's greatest screwball pitcher, shocked his colleagues in the Hall of Fame by showing up for the festivities each year with an arm permanently deformed by his pet pitch. With his arms hanging at his sides, the palm of his left hand faced outward.<br />
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It's why possibly the greatest pitcher in the history of baseball, Sandy Koufax, retired at 30 because he couldn't stand the pain anymore.<br />
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Because every pitcher injures himself every time he pitches.<br />
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If Koufax played today he'd likely be a candidate for Tommy John surgery, an operation named after the left-handed pitcher who first had it successfully in which the ulnar collateral ligament in the elbow is replaced with a tendon from somewhere else in the body.<br />
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<span style="color: #252525; font-family: sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22.3999996185303px;">The surgery has become routine for Major League Baseball pitchers and college, and even high school, player often have it.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #252525; font-family: sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22.3999996185303px;">After the surgery, and about a year of rehab, pitchers come back throwing as hard as ever -- the Washington Nationals' Stephen Strasburg, among the National League leaders in strikeouts this season, is a great example.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #252525; font-family: sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22.3999996185303px;">Corrective surgery for the other common pitching injury, a torn rotator cuff in the shoulder, is less successful, some pitchers come back from it -- but it's not a sure bet.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #252525; font-family: sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22.3999996185303px;">Given the toll that pitching takes on a pitcher's arm, it's surprising that most of the news we heard about steroids in baseball dealt with hitters. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #252525; font-family: sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 22.3999996185303px;">A few pitchers were caught by drug testing, Yankee pitcher Andy Pettitte admitted he'd done them and, although he was found not guilty of perjury for claiming that he never had, there's some pretty </span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #252525; font-family: sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 22.3999996185303px;">strong evidence that Pettitte's buddy Roger Clemens did them too.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #252525; font-family: sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22.3999996185303px;">What do steroids do? Well, they help you to pack on muscle. Strong legs and arm muscles are at least as important for a pitcher as they are for a hitter. What else do steroids do? Well, you won't hear this from the nation's sportswriters who only want to talk about "drug scandals," but the other thing that steroids do is they help you recover from fatigue and injury faster. Can't talk about that because it makes steroids sound like medicine.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #252525; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22.3999996185303px;">But it seems to me that recovering from fatigue and injury faster would be much <i>more </i>important for pitchers. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #252525; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22.3999996185303px;">That's not an endorsement of anabolic steroids by the way, they have a bunch of nasty side effects. Just like all the drugs pitched on television every night do.</span>Virginia Pundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14120407478348260731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3108256726595048581.post-71480956562780079862013-07-24T11:45:00.002-07:002013-07-24T11:45:14.850-07:00Why the governor's apology doesn't clear the airTuesday Gov. Bob McDonnell apologized to the citizens of Virginia and announced that he'd paid back loans that Jonnie Williams of Star Scientific had made to businesses owned by McDonnell and members his family to the tune of $120,000.<br />
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While the governor hopes that ends "Giftgate," it doesn't.<br />
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There's still the $15,000 Williams paid to cover the costs of catering at the governor's daughter's wedding, the designer clothes he bought Mrs. McDonnell and the $7,000 Rolex he bought for the governor at the first lady's request.<br />
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Looking at all of this in the best light for the governor -- there was no <i>quid pro quo</i>, he didn't technically have to report gifts to relatives, Williams was a personal friend -- it still doesn't pass the small test.<br />
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And it's not something voters can relate to. Which of us has "friends" who shower us with gifts of more than $100,000? What kind of man lets another man buy thousands of dollars worth of designer clothes for his wife?<br />
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The situation is weird and has an innate wrongness about it that anyone can recognize.<br />
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While the governor may not be found to have done anything criminal by the three on-going investigations, that doesn't mean his actions were ethical. And no one looking at the situation objectively can believe that they were. <br />
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Except perhaps the Republican leadership in the House of Delegates who reacted to the governor's apology like that made everything alright. And they promise a reform bill that will put caps and limits on gifts and require reporting gifts to family members.<br />
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Caps? Limits? Reports?<br />
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How about this -- no statewide government official, member of the legislature or their families is allowed to take <i>any </i>gift from anyone with interests before state government?<br />
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What positive purpose is served by allowing them to take even modest gifts?<br />
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Look, if they get the key to the city or plaque for being legislator of the year, they should get to keep those.<br />
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But designer clothes, hunting trips, foreign trips, expensive watches? No. There''s no reason to allow those, they give the perception of impropriety, even if there is no explicit <i>quid pro quo. </i><br />
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And this is <i>not</i> a partisan issue. Folks on both sides have been guilty of having their hands out in the past. And folks from both sides, those of us outside the "gift culture" of state government, should be able to agree that these gifts should <i>not</i> be part of the perks of public office.<i> </i>Virginia Pundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14120407478348260731noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3108256726595048581.post-80299930518683630712013-06-20T10:42:00.001-07:002013-06-20T10:42:19.380-07:00Talkin' BaseballThose of you who know me well know that it there's one thing I'm more obsessed with than politics and public policy, it's baseball.<br />
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I'm such a baseball geek that when I have insomnia, which is often, I try to put myself to sleep by creating All-Time All Star Teams based on the player's last initial.<br />
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I got this idea from baseball guru Bill James, who said, without going through the whole process, that he thought the "R" team (three Robinsons, Ruth, Ripken, Rose..) would be hard to beat. But he said their pitching would be a little weak and maybe the Bambino would have to take a turn on the mound. With Ol' Hoss Rasbourne, Nolan Ryan and Robin Roberts at the top of the starting rotation and Marino Rivera in the pen to close out games, I don't see their pitching as all that weak. Their weakest position would be center field.<br />
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But the "R" team wouldn't be the best.<br />
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The "S" team (Schmidt, Sandberg, Speaker, Sosa, Al Simmons, Ted Simmons..with Spahn and Seaver for a lefty/righty pitching punch) would be awesome.<br />
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But the "M" team would be the best. It should be enough to say that the outfield would be Musial/Mays/Mantle, but the infield of Willie McCovey, Joe Morgan, Eddie Mathews and Rabbit Maranville (team is so good the shortstop doesn't have to hit) is almost as good. Thurman Munson would be the catcher.<br />
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Pitching? The rotation starts off with Christy Mathewson, Greg Maddux and Juan Marichal.<br />
Definitely the best.<br />
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Before I wandered into this longish tangent, I'd been intending to talk about this baseball season.<br />
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I'm a Red Sox fan in the American League and a Cubs fan in the National League (My Cubs loyalty has been wavering since the Richmond Times-Dispatch decided to treat the Nationals like the area's home team), because I like to be equally frustrated and crazy in both leagues.<br />
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The Red Sox have been atop the American League East for weeks now.<br />
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I'm not buying it.<br />
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That's not just the knee-jerk pessimism of a life-long Red Sox fan. Looking at their roster I just can't see a playoff team. So I'm expecting the Sox' typical summer swoon. At least it won't be the Yankees who beat us. They've got a better team on the disabled list than they can put on the field. The Orioles look to me to be the class of the AL East.<br />
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The real story in baseball this year is on the left coast. Both Los Angeles teams spent money as if they were trying to make the Yankees and Red Sox jealous in an attempt to field all star teams. As of today, the Angels are third in the American League West, 8 games under .500, and the Dodger are dead last in National League West, five games behind the fourth place team.<br />
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I'm happy to see the Dodgers floundered since they got about half of their "all star" team from the Red Sox in a late season trade last year.<br />
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The Angels are puzzling. This is the second year in a row they've signed the most sought after free agent, Albert Pujols in 2012 and Jeff Hamilton this year, only to field mediocre teams.<br />
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Since I'm sort of half rooting for the Nationals now, I have to say they need to get their act in gear soon. They are second in the NL East, but under .500. It will take a lot of wins to get in the NL playoffs this year because two teams in the league, Miami and Houston, seem capable of losing 110 games apiece. Someone will have to win those games, so it wouldn't be surprising to see two or three teams in the NL pushing 100 wins.<br />
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I'd <br />
<br />Virginia Pundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14120407478348260731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3108256726595048581.post-59082396738904509792013-06-19T11:43:00.002-07:002013-06-19T11:43:53.576-07:00Bobby we hardly knew ye"Governor, I know Bob McDonnell. Bob McDonnell was a friend of mine. You are no Bob McDonnell."<br />
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Maybe it's an exaggeration to say that Gov. McDonnell and I were friends back when I covered the legislature full time and he was one of the Republicans' leading lights in the House of Delegates. But we were certainly friendly acquaintances.<br />
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He, along with now Sen. Frank Wagner, was one of the few guys on the GOP side in the House then who you'd want to have a beer with. And we had a couple. We didn't agree about much politically, but we could discuss it reasonably.<br />
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We had a good enough relationship that I could jokingly suggest bills or amendments he might want to introduce, usually things no Republican in his right mind would propose.<br />
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And we were friendly enough that he came to me and asked for an explanation of the press corps' behavior after Republicans took control of the House.<br />
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When Democrats had control the first group of reporters into the House Chamber usually sat on the bench behind the back row of Democrats.. We continued to do that after Republicans took control.<br />
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"We're in charge now, why are you guys still sitting over there," McDonnell asked me. "It looks like you're on their side." (I think he intended the pun).<br />
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I explained the reasons to him. First, the Democrats leadership, Dick Cranwell and Alan Diamonstein, sat on the back row. The Republican leadership sat in the midst of their caucus, so they weren't any more accessible if you were sitting on the back row on their side.<br />
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And there was another reason.<br />
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"They come back and tell us jokes," I said. "Cranwell and Diamonstein and Chip Woodrum and Jay DeBoer are <i>funny."</i><br />
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"Hey, we've got some funny guys," McDonnell countered "Jack Reid sits on the back row."<br />
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At that point, I only knew former Del. Reid from his behavior on the floor of the House, where he was a jerk and a bully.<br />
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"Yeah, but his idea of a joke is an old lady falling on the sidewalk while running for her bus," I told the future governor.<br />
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(That same year, Del. Reid and I were dinner companions at the Capitol Correspondents' dinner, and he <i>was</i> in fact funny. And also a Red Sox fan. It's hard to hate somebody who is a Sox fan.)<br />
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The point of this long introduction is that I knew and liked Bob McDonnell when he ran for governor. I told Democrats he'd be hard to beat. Turned out he was impossible to beat.<br />
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Which makes me wonder how he's gone so far wrong now.<br />
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Last year he was being touted as a possible Republican vice presidential candidate. This year he's looking more like a possible cell mate for former Del. Phil Hamilton.<br />
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A federal grand jury is investigating McDonnell's links with Star Scientific, a nutrient supplement maker. McDonnell has received campaign contributions and gifts from the company's founder, including $15,000 to pay for catering at McDonnell's daughter's wedding, a gift that was not initially reported.<br />
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There's also a probe of irregularities in the Governor's Mansion kitchen, for which the former chef may face charges. He's reportedly told investigators of "abuse" by Mrs. McDonnell, who allegedly re-directed food and kitchen equipment to her children.<br />
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The Bob McDonnell I knew had a lot better sense than this. <br />
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You never want to bring any body's spouse into a political story -- in fact most people who've worked in politics would prefer to keep the spouses out of campaigns too, because they are a pain to deal with.<br />
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(I can remember sitting in a meeting where a campaign manager basically tried to fire the candidate's wife from the campaign. Somebody got fired, but it wasn't the wife.)<br />
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But Mrs. McDonnell seems to be firmly entrenched in the middle of this story.<br />
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The First Lady's staff apparently pushed to hold a promotional event for Star Scientific at the mansion. At least one of the governor's staff -- Tucker Martin -- recognized the impropriety of that.<br />
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The sad thing for Martin, and the rest of McDonnell's staff, is they'll now have to lawyer up to deal with the investigation.<br />
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Perhaps the answer to why McDonnell would do things that he had to know weren't politically smart, to say the least, is eternal: Love is blind. And deaf. And ethically challenged.<br />
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It would be a shame if Bob McDonnell, the first Virginia governor in nearly 30 years to have a positive impact on the state's perennial transportation crisis, is remembered only for petty scandal.<br />
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<i><br /> </i>Virginia Pundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14120407478348260731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3108256726595048581.post-89821476336944219252013-06-06T11:38:00.000-07:002013-06-06T16:57:10.857-07:00Scandals -- No, not the television show.Both the state and national political news these days are filled with allegations of "scandal." That's no surprise. Those of us in the media love to cover political scandals because it's easier than talking about issues and the public is more interested.<br />
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Some of the "scandals" are more scandalous than others.<br />
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Let's start in Washington.<br />
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The scandal over the the deaths of four at our embassy in Benghazi, Libya is, and has been from the start, a partisan witch hunt. It's less serious than Clinton's Monicagate scandal that Republican irritated the country by fixating on for a years and half. Questions about if "act of terror" and "terrorism" mean the same thing are reminiscent of Clinton's ruminations on the definition of "is."<br />
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Who's responsible for Benghazi? The terrorist who conducted the attack. The furor over this issue is unworthy of Republicans. When 200 Marines that Ronald Reagan had placed in harm's way in Lebanon were killed by a suicide bomber, no one questioned Reagan's motives. Apparently, we don't even hang together in a crisis anymore.<br />
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The "IRS Scandal," in which the IRS office responsible for making sure that organizations registered as tax exempt are really engaged in tax exempt activities used "Tea Party" and terms related to the tea party movement to identify who to audit, appears so far as a blunder rather than a scandal. The IRS workers were trying to streamline their process and they had been getting a lot of new applications from Tea Party sympathetic groups. If anyone there had any political savvy, they would have added a couple of liberal buzz words, maybe :"choice "and "progressive" to the list. No one was kept from forming a group or expressing their opinions. At this point, it's not even clear that anyone was denied a tax exemption.. Despite the uproar on the right, this isn't the equivalent of the Nixon administration planning to use the IRS to "screw our political enemies."<br />
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The other Obama administration scandals are more serious.<br />
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The most serious is the administration's wire tapping of Associated Press employees in the quest to hunt down the source of a leak. I don't say this is the most serious because it affects the press, I say it because this is clearly a violation of Constitutional rights and existing law.<br />
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Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday that he "wasn't comfortable" approving the search warrant for the investigation. He should have been less comfortable, since it was clearly wrong, and ignoring his instincts ought to cost him a job.<br />
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The Obama administration had the chance to learn from the folly of previous administrations, but failed. The damage you do searching for a leaker is almost always greater than the harm of the leak itself.<br />
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The Obama administration is also clearly in the wrong on the latest scandal, that Verizon has given the National Security Agency full access to the phone records of all its customers. While this is a scandal, it isn't news. It started during the Busch administration.<br />
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Which doesn't let Obama off the hook. A lot of people voted for him because they thought he would be <i>better</i> on civil liberties issues, like collecting data on Americans, like torture, like Gitmo, like the Patriot Act, than Bush was. The fact that he's been the same on all these issues ranks with the failure to lock up the stock jobbers who caused the 2008 economic crash and to make sure it couldn't happen again, as the biggest failure of the administration and will probably be seen as such by history.<br />
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Obama had the chance to be a great president. The Affordable Care Act, if the agents of plutocracy don't manage to steal it back from the people, will be the most important domestic achievement since Social Security. His handling of foreign policy, with one war ended, another winding down and a third amorphous "war on terror" being waged with drone attacks, is about as adept as any recent presidents.<br />
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But his failure to roll back the Bush civil liberties excesses or to tame an out-of-control financial system will compel history to find him mediocre at best.<br />
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At the time when the country needed a full-blooded populist and champion of civil liberties, we got a hedger.<br />
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In Virginia, the scandals are easier to understand .. they're all about politicians taking money from folks who they help out with influence or legislation or favors.<br />
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The real shock is that we're having these kinds of scandals here. Virginia's ethics laws allow politicians to take any size bribe they want, as long as they report it. Apparently that requirement is too much for some.<br />
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Gov. Bob McDonnell didn't think he had to report a gift of $15,000 from Star Scientific CEO Jonnie Williams which went to pay the catering bill at his daughter's wedding. McDonnell said it was a gift to his daughter and didn't have to be reported.<br />
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Look, Bob McDonnell is not a neophyte, he spent more than a decade in the House of Delegates and four years as attorney general. He knew that not reporting the gift was violating the spirit, if not the letter, of the disclosure rules.<br />
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And then it turned out even that story wasn't true. McDonnell signed the contract for catering, not his daughter, the check to pay for it was made payable to his wife, not his daughter.<br />
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There are also questions about an event that McDonnell and his wife hosted at the Governor's Mansion for Star Scientific, a tobacco supplement company.<br />
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The recent released emails about this event have caused me to believe it springs from a common problem that Republican administrations in Virginia run into -- they end up putting campaign kids into fairly important state offices. They don't have much choice, most adult Republicans aren't looking for a government job -- they don't like government. So you end up with people who known nothing about government in important positions. You can see this in the emails,when old pro Tucker Martin gets wind of what's going on and questions the propriety, apparently too late. It also seems from the emails that the push for the event was coming from the first lady's staff.<br />
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This is serious. So serious that Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, the Republicans 2013 candidate for governor, appointed a special prosecutor to look into it and a related scandal about the governor's mansion chef. You know that's the last thing Cuccinelli wanted to do. Because he's got his own Star Scientific problems. For one thing, he failed to report company stock that he owned at a time when the company was involved with the state in litigation. He also didn't report $18,000 in gifts from the company until the were discovered by the press.<br />
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Cuccinelli would be best served if McDonnell's Star Scientific problems went away because, just as they are here, every time McDonnell's issues come up, so will Cunccinelli's.<br />
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Under Virginia's ridiculously lax ethics laws, the worst that will happen to either McDonnell or Cuccinelli is a slap-on-the-wrist fine.<br />
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Nobody is going to jail, unless federal prosecutors want to get involved.<br />
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But Cuccinelli might not be going to the Governor's Mansion either.<br />
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Virginia Pundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14120407478348260731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3108256726595048581.post-81916552548259668642013-05-06T12:02:00.002-07:002013-05-06T12:02:27.940-07:00Maybe we've grown up?It's been weeks since the Boston Marathon bombing and no one in Congress is seriously proposing doing any further damage to the Bill of Rights.<br />
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Frankly, I'm shocked. <br />
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Apparently we've made a little progress in the dozen years since 9/11.<br />
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Oh, sure there are already "Boston Truthers," who are even more demented than the "9/11 Truthers" or the "Birthers," but really they are just a reflexive response by the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party to try to blame everything on Barrack Obama. And even some of the president's usual critics aren't buying the "government plot" version of Boston. Since we've got the two guys who did it on video and we killed one and captured the other, there's not really fertile ground for a conspiracy theory go grow in.<br />
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Unless you really <i>are</i> ready for a tin-foil hat. <br />
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Not that some haven't tried.<br />
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Former Rep. Ron Paul, and unsuccessful candidate for presidential candidate as both a Libertarian and a Republican tried to sound the "tyranny of government" trumpet, deriding what he said was the "military occupation" of an American city in the search for the bombers.<br />
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He apparently missed the television footage of Boston and Watertown residents standing in the streets to give the police a rousing ovation for doing what public safety workers are supposed to do -- keep the public safe during an emergency. They looked more like citizens proud of their country, their state and their hometown than victims of tyranny, but maybe that's just me.<br />
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But the remarkable things to me is that Congress did not rush back into session, to enact national "stop and frisk" laws or to pass a law repealing the Miranda decision or to ban pressure cookers.<br />
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Unlike the era after 9/11 when the Bush Administration and Congress competed to see who could do the most damage to the Bill of Rights.<br />
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I think that didn't happen this time because we learned something from 9/11.<br />
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None of the emergency security measures we passed made us any more secure, while they made us less free.<br />
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While the privacy, dignity and rights of Americans have been violated for so long now at our airports by TSA that we've almost gotten used to it, it's important to remember that the mall cops who want to cavity search grandma and use their super cameras to look under our clothes have never stopped a terrorist. Both the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber were stopped by alert passengers.<br />
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We've learned that, as Ben Franklin warned us, trading freedom for security would leave us with neither.<br />
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I think that's why there hasn't been another wave of public bed-wetting in the wake of the first successful large-scale terrorists attack here since 9/11. There's a realization that trading freedom for safety only leaves us less free and no more safe.<br />
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Only took us a decade to learn what Dr. Franklin knew almost 250 years ago.<br />
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<br />Virginia Pundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14120407478348260731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3108256726595048581.post-12637410408393405922013-04-10T12:30:00.002-07:002013-04-10T12:30:57.046-07:00Gun lobby jumps the shark<br />
I thought I was on the pro-gun side of the ongoing argument over gun control.<br />
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I grew up in a house where we hunted and fished and their were always long guns and pistols in the house. I don't have the knee-jerk anti-gun reaction that spurs some of my friends on the left anytime a gun makes the news.<br />
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At the same time, I've thought some of the people on "my side" of the argument presented ridiculous arguments that made anyone willing to say publicly that they believed the 2nd Amendment gave individual Americans the right to keep and bear arms vaguely ridiculous by association.<br />
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The first of those is that more guns equates to fewer gun homicides. That's contrary to the evidence and to common sense and no one really believes it, even the people who make the argument.<br />
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Look, here are the facts, our liberty to keep and bear arms comes with a cost, just like all our other liberties. Some of our civil rights mean that guilty criminals will go free, that hateful speech will at times dominate the national chat room and that zealous believers in ancient superstitions will try to contaminate our science and history text books with fairy tales and arrant nonsense.<br />
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In the case of our right to bear arms, the cost is that a number of people who would otherwise remain alive will be killed. We've measured that cost and found it worthwhile. Just as we measure the costs of additional traffic fatalities and find that we can justify the number of people who have to die for us to have speed limits in excess of 25 miles-per-hour (Everywhere, except Williamsburg of course).<br />
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The other argument that makes me ashamed to be on the pro-gun side is that our Founding Fathers approved the 2nd Amendment so that we would have the option of rebelling and overthrowing our government.<br />
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It's a silly argument. First, the Founding Fathers feared nothing more than "the mob." They'd just spend a lot of time setting up a government that avoided empowering the mob. To think they then inserted a provision to allow that government to more easily be overthrown is to cast the Founding Fathers as Founding Fools.<br />
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In fact, they inserted the right to bear arms into the Bill of Rights in the context of the need for a strong militia. To uphold the state, not to overthrow it. Our current militia is the National Guard. Does anyone think there's any chance of the Virginia National Guard overthrowing the Commonwealth's government? No, of course not, it's lunacy. So, by the way, is the idea that a few gun nuts and their AR-15 is going to pose much of a threat to the U,S. Armed Forces. As far as I know not even the most rabid gun proponent is arguing for a tank in every garage and ICBM in every back yard. Get out of your "Red Dawn" fantasy life and come back to reality. <br />
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So what of the proposals made by the anti-gun side?<br />
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First, let's identify what concerns they are seeking to address. Nobody is trying to ban handguns held for personal protection or rifles and shotguns used for hunting.<br />
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The concern is to try to minimize the damage a nut can do when he starts firing at random people in a public setting. Those are what the cases that have brought gun control to the center of the public consciousnesses now are about.<br />
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One proposal was to ban the military-style assault rifle that seems to be the weapon of choice for these suicidal sociopaths.<br />
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I'm against that. Because it doesn't really do anything. The assault rifle ban would outlaw weapons that are functionally the same as weapons that still remain legal, based entirely on what they look like. It doesn't do anything. I gives the illusion that we've done something and make everyone feel better.<br />
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The same is true of a proposal to limit magazine sizes. If you limit the magazine from 30 rounds to 10, it just means the shooter has to change magazines a couple of time, costing him mere seconds. It doesn't really have an affect, except to lull those who've become worried by the recent rash of public shootings back into complacency.<br />
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So, although I initially thought it worthwhile, I decided that magazine restriction didn't bear supporting either.<br />
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That left the one proposal that -- before the pro-gun movement jumped the shark -- everyone seemed to agree on, universal background checks to keep guns out of the hands of felons and the mentally ill. Everybody, from the greediest gun-grabber to the looniest firearm fetishist, seemed to agree on that.<br />
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And we know it works. We've had instant background checks in Virginia for more than 20 years. In that time they have kept thousands of guns out of the hands of felons and whackjobs. That's easy to overlook because the guys who are denied a gun don't make any public impact. And, all to often, guys who slip though the cracks, like the Virginia Tech shooter, become the central figures in yet another nightly news nightmare.<br />
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The fact that the system isn't perfect doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Our criminal justice system isn't perfect either. We don't throw up our hands and throw open the prison doors.<br />
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Background checks do nothing to limit the rights of "law-abiding American citizens" to own and bear firearms. <br />
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But now the pro-gun movement has decided that even background checks are an "infringement" of the right to bear arms. Because that's apparently the only absolute right in the Bill of Rights.<br />
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The are fighting against the very idea of taking a vote on background checks.<br />
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Well, this is my stop. This is where I get off. I can't agree with that and I don't think much of reasonable America can either. This is the moment when the pro-gun movement has tied its fate to its most radical proponents and decided it doesn't care what mainstream America thinks.<br />
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And so, this is probably the high tide of the pro-gun movement.<br />
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And I only ask that my former allies do us one favor. If you can't agree to reasonable background checks that would keep guns out of the wrong hand, just dispense with the talking point that you care whose hands they end up in and admit that the net affect of your lobbying makes us less safe.<br />
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And please, in the name of everything decent, just stop the sham and pretense that you give a damn about the victims of random shootings and their families. You should be ashamed to speak their names, which should lay like ashes on your tongues. Because by your actions you are guaranteeing that there will be many, many more just like them.<br />
<br />Virginia Pundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14120407478348260731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3108256726595048581.post-15030479174914681922013-04-01T11:26:00.002-07:002013-04-01T11:30:02.844-07:00If you ain't got HBO, you ain't got no TV!Okay, so their slogan is "It's not TV, it's HBO."<br />
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The title of this post, cribbed from what someone once said should be the slogan for Duke's mayonnaise, with an expletive deleted, would be just as fitting.<br />
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How much HBO has changed the rest of television came to me again last night, as I was watching the "Game of Thrones" season premier. <br />
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Younger readers, those who don't remember what it was like before cable, might not understand HBO's importance.<br />
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Before cable, children, we had the three network affiliates and PBS. And usually the reception on the PBS channel was horrible.<br />
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After cable, we had a couple of dozen stations at first.<br />
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But, with the exception of sports on ESPN, music videos on MTV, baseball on TBS and WGN and wrestling on TBS and USA, almost everything on cable was stuff you'd already seen on the three networks.<br />
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Most of basic cable channels' programming was syndicated reruns of old situation comedies and cop shows.<br />
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It was once possible to watch television 24-hours a day and see nothing by "MASH" reruns. While it might still be possible to do the same thing with the various "Law & Order" franchises, basic cable has much more programming now. Old reruns are pretty much contained on TVLand and couple of similar channels.<br />
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HBO was the catalyst for the change, showing other cable channels how rewarding original programming could be. And, in the process, upgrading the quality of television.<br />
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That wasn't the original idea. Home Box Office was supposed to be the channel that brought you major moves and sporting events, like championship fights, for a premium.<br />
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However, as cable evolved, studios and promoters realized that they could make more money by putting their product on pay-per-view than by selling it to HBO.<br />
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That left HBO with time to fill.<br />
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And boy did they fill it.<br />
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Starting with "Sex And The City" and "The Sopranos," HBO rolled out a series of critically-acclaimed shows and turned Sunday into "must see TV" night. (NBC had the original "must see' night on Thursday with four sitcom, most prominently "The Cosby Show" and "Cheers" leading into a blockbuster drama -- first "Hill Street Blues," then "L.A. Law" and finally "E.R." ).<br />
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Following "The Sopranos" success came, in no particular order, "Six Feet Under," "Big Love," "Atlantic City," "True Blood" and ""Game of Thrones.'<br />
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Even the failures, "Deadwood" -- which I liked, and which certainly holds the record for the television show with the filthiest language -- and Carnivale, which was cancelled just as I was beginning to figure out what was going on, interesting.<br />
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HBO hasn't done as well with comedies, with only "Entourage" standing out. I suppose "Curb Your Enthusiasm" could be considered a success, it's been on a long time. But to me Larry David is like Jim Carey and Adam Sandler, I can't stand him so I change the channel as soon as I see him, So I've seen maybe three minutes of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" in all the years it's been on.<br />
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Once HBO had some success with original programing, other cable channels followed.<br />
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Showtime, once HBO's rival for movies and sports, became perhaps its biggest rival in original programming, with its best shows also premiering on Sunday nights from "The L Word" to "Dexter" to "Weeds."<br />
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Then, even basic cable channels began to get into the act, USA network has had a number of original shows the best of which are probably "Burn Notice" and "Suits." FX came out with "Sons of Anarchy" The most praised cable show of the last five years, "Mad Men," is on AMC, a channel originally intended to air old movies.<br />
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At this point, we've reached the best -- and the worst -- of all possible television worlds. While there are so many excellent shows on television right now there really isn't time to watch them all -- even with "On Demand" and DVRs -- there's also worse garbage than ever as well. Network television has fallen into a terrible rut of cop shoes, standard sitcoms and reality dreck. (To be fair, cable has its share of bad reality shows too. Bravo, for example is responsible for the whole "Real Housewives of..(fill in the blank)" genre and MTV brought us "Jersey Shore.").<br />
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One thing I'm not sure I do like is that cable has redefined a television season as 13 or 14 episodes. Network seasons used to be about 25 episodes long. So you got half a year of new shows, then a round of reruns and maybe a summer replacement show. Now, there's a pretty long wait for your favorites to come back on. You really need that "Previously on...." segment to catch back up to where you were.<br />
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"Mad Men" is scheduled to return next week, and for the life of me I can't remember what was going on when the last season ended and it usually skips a year between seasons.<br />
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<br />Virginia Pundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14120407478348260731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3108256726595048581.post-86274957216392252182013-03-25T11:44:00.002-07:002013-03-25T11:44:47.961-07:00OMG! It's the Snowpocalypse Look, I get it.<br />
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I grew up in Richmond. I know we're all required to run to the grocery store and buy up all the bread, milk and toilet paper at the first mention of the word "snow."<br />
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Since I have a lot of teacher friends, I even know that some of us begin gleefully planning for snow days in advance. Or so I read on Facebook.<br />
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Just as an aside -- any significant snowfall in Virginia means that a couple of people who would otherwise be alive will be killed in traffic accidents and it's likely that thousands will lose power for a period ranging from 30 minutes to a week.<br />
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(My wife would tell you that the power issue is most critical. Because I become a particularly bad- tempered troll when the power is out.) <br />
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Some people's jobs get tougher when it snows. Mine does, but I'm really think of VDOT workers, police and fire department personnel and folks who work for the electric company. I guess my job has taken a new level of getting worse when it snows now that we are supposed to post video to our website. I guess I'll have to go out and stand in the snow so people will believe me that it's snowing, the way television reporters do.<br />
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Seems like an awful high price for people who already get two months a year off to get an extra vacation day. <br />
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But I digress, my topic wasn't the childish fascination that teachers have for snow. No, what I can here to talk about today was driving. And how people in Virginia can't do it if it snows.<br />
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I understand that it's unfamiliar. It doesn't snow here a lot. But it's really simple to improve safety on our roads during bad weather.<br />
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First don't drive if you don't have to.<br />
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But if you have to, try to refrain from two really bad habits that Virginia drivers have in all seasons, but which are particularly dangerous in the snow.<br />
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First, stop following people so closely. The difference between allowing correct spacing between your car and the vehicle in front of you and running 10 feet off that guy's bumper -- no matter what the speed limit -- has little impact on your time of arrival at your destination. It can be measured in seconds. However the time you'll lose if that guy should have to slam on his brakes - of if he does so without reason, see below -- could be much longer. It might be measured in eternity.<br />
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In the snow this is even more important. The two times you are most likely to have traction problems in the snow are when you are accelerating and when you are braking. So you should do both gradually.<br />
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And that means increasing following distance. Ideally, in situations where the road surface may be slippery, you should leave enough space that if that driver were to totally lose it and wreck, you could take you foot off the accelerator and coast to a stop short of that vehicle. Other drivers sometime won't let you get that much space, they'll cut in front of you which means they are following the vehicle that was in front of them too closely and you're now following them to closely.<br />
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Do your best and if you do have to brake, do it gradually.<br />
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Which brings us to the next bad habit -- don't ride the brake.<br />
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There's a pedal on the floor of your car that is used to control your speed. It's called the accelerator. If you want to go faster you press down, it you want to slow down you put less pressure.<br />
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There's another pedal on the floor board. That's the brake. The purpose of the brake pedal is to <i>stop</i> <br />
your car or to reduce speed very quickly in an emergency.<br />
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On the interstate, unless something very wrong is going on in front of you, you should not have your foot on the brake pedal.<br />
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People in Virginia love the brake for some reason. I've seen people applying their brakes on I-64 when there wasn't another car between them and the horizon. This is one of those things that I don't understand -- like the reverence for the loser generals on Monument Avenue or the popularity of NASCAR -- despite having lived here most of my life.<br />
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I often wonder why those drivers are braking. Some, I think, are doing it bring their car out of cruise control. You can accomplish the same thing by flipping the cruise control switch on and off without hitting the brakes.<br />
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Because when you hit the brakes that affects everybody behind you.<br />
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My Dad, who had a world of good advice that I usually didn't listen to, once gave me a driving tip that should be a required part of every Driver's Ed class in America.<br />
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"If you are the cause of another driver having to use his brakes," Dad said. "That's poor diving on your part."<br />
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When roads are bad that's all the more reason to keep your foot off the brake, braking is one of things most likely to cause a skid. If you're maintaining proper distance, you shouldn't need to brake.<br />
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The one factor during bad weather that you don't have much control over is other drivers. I've been in two accidents in winter weather, in both of which I stopped short of a wreck in front of me and the driver behind me slid into my car.<br />
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There's not much that you can do about that. But the less you apply your brakes, the less the guy behind you will think that he needs to apply his.<br />
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The less either of you touch the brake pedal the safer you and everybody else will be.<br />
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<br />Virginia Pundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14120407478348260731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3108256726595048581.post-43063906953930379772012-05-03T12:09:00.001-07:002012-05-03T12:29:01.206-07:00How to survive raising taxesThe three incumbents running for Williamsburg City Council were all re-elected Tuesday, despite the fact that next Thursday they will almost certainly approve a budget that increases taxes, possibly multiple taxes.<br />
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When City Manager Jack Tuttle proposed a budget two months ago that included increases in the real estate tax rate, personal property tax rate, cigarette tax and in EMS fees, I wrote that he'd "thrown the three incumbents up for re-election a live hand grenade."<br />
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When it became apparent that only one challenger would run, with three seats up for grabs, there seemed to be a good chance that Mayor Clyde Haulman, Vice Mayor Paul Freiling and City Councilwoman Judy Knudson would end up in a game of hot potato with that grenade, with whoever got caught holding it getting an unpleasant surprise.<br />
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Challenger Ginger Crapse, though in her own words "a rank amateur" as a politician, latched on to the tax increase issue with laser-like focus and showed message discipline worthy of Jim "No Car Tax" Gilmore or George "Liberal, Lenient, Parole System" Allen.<br />
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Crapse even got some odd "good luck" on the campaign's final weekend. She was out campaigning door to door when she saw a house on fire and ran into it to alert the residents. While Crapse may have dramatized her role in the incident a little -- some published reports had her "kicking in the door," which didn't happen, and the residents said they already knew there was a fire -- the fact remains that Crapse saw a burning building and ran into it to try to help people. She ran to the sound of the guns. A lot of people would not have done that.<br />
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But neither anti-tax fervor nor firefighting helped Crapse much on Election Day. In a very low turnout election, she finished nearly 300 votes behind Knudson, 400 behind Haulman and Freiling.<br />
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And it wasn't really a surprise.<br />
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As the campaign played out, two things were obvious -- that Williamsburg didn't care too much about this election and that Crapse had failed to spark a tax revolt.<br />
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The lack of enthusiasm for the election was likely because for the first time in five election cycles there was no candidate from the College of William & Mary. The presence of student candidates had boosted participation in Council elections by students (who wanted to elect one of their own) and by townies (who, by and large, wanted to prevent that from happening). When then-student Scott Foster broke through in 2010, leading the ticket and amassing more votes for Council than anyone has in the last ten years, the urgency went out of that effort.<br />
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So turnout dropped to under 15%. That could have helped Crapse. But it ended up making no difference.<br />
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Why didn't her anti-tax message resonate more with Williamsburg voters?<br />
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Some of the reasons are peculiar to Williamsburg. The city has a very low 54 cents per $100 real estate tax rate. It's lower than either of the adjacent counties. That may be a situation that's unique in Virginia. The reason Williamsburg has such a low rate is that it relies much less on the real estate tax to fund government than other Virginia localities. For years, tourism-related taxes, principally the hotel room tax and the meals tax, have provided more than half of the city's budget. That percentage has fallen some during the Great Recession, but Williamsburg still depends less on the real estate tax than most localities.<br />
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A second uniquely Williamsburg factor is that city voters are spoiled. For their Yugo level of real estate taxes they've enjoyed a Cadillac level of government services over the years, with tourists footing the bill. They don't want to lose those services.<br />
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As an example, in most localities in Virginia, and probably in most in the United States, garbage pickup is once a week. You pay a fee for it and you have to pull your can out to the street. Until two years ago, Williamsburg had two garbage pickups a week, for no fee and the garbage men would go around to the side or the back of your house to get the trash and then take the empty cans back.<br />
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When the city cut back to one pickup a week two years ago, still with no fee and still without requiring residents to pull the cans to the street, many residents reacted as if the world would end. It didn't and the city saved about $800,000.<br />
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So, I think it's fair to note that Williamsburg voters are more predisposed to favor increased taxes to reduced services than most across the state.<br />
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Still there are some lessons from Williamsburg that could be applicable to other local government or even the state when tax increases are needed. And, yes, sometimes they are needed.<br />
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<strong>1. Don't make a tax increase the first option - </strong>It certainly wasn't in Williamsburg, which last raised taxes more than 20 years ago. City Council has cut the budget in four of the past five years to deal with the recession. They've cut services. They've cut personnel. They've cut back on employee benefits. As a result the proposed Fiscal Year 2013 budget, even with the tax increase, is smaller than the FY 2009 budget.<br />
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<strong>2. Explain why it's necessary -- </strong>In Williamsburg a tax increase was needed because the city got hit with a perfect storm of forced expenditures and reduced revenues at the same time. State-mandated increases in VRS contributions from city employees and for school teachers hit the same year that the city's percentage of children in the Williamsburg-James City County school system went up for the first time in 20 years, likely because the recession left some folks who would have bought houses in one of the counties renting in the city. The city's costs for employee healthcare were also up. In addition the city's real estate revenues were off because of reduced assessments. And the room, sales and meals taxes, while recovering, have yet to regain pre-recession levels. The end result was a hole in the budget of about $900,000, which the tax increases <em>and </em>further cuts in expenditures would fill.<br />
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<strong>3. If you have to raise taxes make it as little as possible - </strong>Taking a page out of the General Assembly's book, the current Council asked Tuttle and Finance Director Phil Serra to come back with more optimistic projections for room and meals tax revenue, which would cut about $300,000 out of the hole to be filled. That's possible because, as Crapse rightly noted in the campaign, for years Tuttle and Serra have lowballed those revenue estimates. That's a conservative form of budgeting that has led to the city generally outperforming the budget and guaranteed that any end-of-the-fiscal-year surprises were good ones. Council may yet regret this decision.<br />
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4. <strong> All taxes are not created equal - </strong>The proposed budget include a 3-cent increases in the real estate tax, a 50-cent hike in the personal property tax and a nickel increase in the current 25-cents per pack city cigarette tax. To the extent that any organized opposition has been raised to the increases, the jumps on the personal property tax and the cigarette tax have been most strongly opposed. Businesses in the city feel that the personal property tax hike hits them disproportionately because they pay the tax on more categories of property than private citizens. Freiling, at least, has publicly agreed with this and might favor a larger real estate increase and smaller personal property tax increase. One city convenience store has said the cigarette tax already put them at a competitive disadvantage to stores in the counties, which can't levy such a tax. They fear an increase would put them at a bigger disadvantage. As a smoker who spends a lot of time in the area, I'd be surprised if people are price shopping for cigarettes. Especially since it's almost impossible to remember exactly where the city stops and the counties start. Look at Williamsburg on a map some time; it's shaped like an amoeba.<br />
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<strong>5. Play your cards close to the vest </strong>- Although all three incumbents made it clear they "weren't necessarily opposed to a tax increase," none of them exactly jumped out in front and led the parade for it. Haulman at one point said, "This isn't our budget, it's the city manager's budget." All three said it was "too early to tell" about the tax increase because of lingering uncertainty about the state budget and the school system's budget. Freiling probably came the closest to advocating the tax increase when he said the hole in the budget was so large that he couldn't see how the city could fill it "without some increases in revenue."<br />
The bottom line was that the three incumbents knew the election was on May 1 and they didn't have to go on the record voting for a tax increase until May 10.Virginia Pundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14120407478348260731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3108256726595048581.post-84866908263248659782012-01-09T11:56:00.000-08:002012-01-09T11:56:39.419-08:00Is there a Senate deal that would help both sides?With the opening of the Virginia General Assembly upon us in two days and with chaos threatening to reign in the Senate, is there a quasi-power sharing agreement that would satisfy by both sides and avoid a lot of aggravation?<br />
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There very well might be.<br />
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Democrats are claiming that Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling can't vote on organizing the Senate. Republicans claim that vote gives them the majority. Ironically, the two parties are taking the opposite positions that they took the last time the Senate was deadlocked 20-20, in 1996. At that time the lieutenant governor was a Democrat, Don Beyer.<br />
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A judge refused to grant an injunction against Bolling casting the tie-breaking vote because the issue was not "ripe," since he hadn't yet done so. The lawsuit filed by Democratic Caucus Chairman Sen. Donald McEachin is still in front of the court. If, really when, Bolling casts his tie-breaking vote, the Democrats could go back to court. Of course, that would require them to walk off the floor, denying a quorum in the Senate until the issue could be resolved. And that's complicated by the fact that Bolling, like the governor or a member of the legislature can't be compelled to answer to a civil suit during the General Assembly session.<br />
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So chaos could ensue.<br />
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But it's not necessary. Because there could be a deal that gives both sides part of what they want.<br />
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Bolling put out a well-reasoned memo dealing with what issues he believes he can cast a tie-breaking vote on and which he cannot. He believes that he can vote on organization, but not on issuing debt, constitutional amendments or final passage of the state budget. I think his analysis is right.<br />
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Which could cause problems for Republicans, as well as Democrats. They now need consensus with Democrats on the budget and they are unlikely to get it if Democrats feel that Republicans are trying to grab power they didn't win at the polls.<br />
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But there would seem to be a deal out there.<br />
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In recognition of their victory at the polls and Bolling's tie-breaking vote, Republicans would be recognized as the majority and control the floor. Sen. Tommy Norment would be the Majority Leader and Republicans would chair every committee.<br />
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But, reflecting what each side <em>earned </em>in November, instead of the 10-6 majorities Norment has talked about on committees, each side would have an equal number of seats on committees. This would allow Democrats to kill some bad social issues bills coming over from the House in committee, which probably wouldn't really make Norment, Bolling or Gov. Bob McDonnell -- who could avoid having to sign nutty social issues legislation while auditioning for the vice presidential nomination -- unhappy either.<br />
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Democrats would probably also want a pledge that Norment will not, as he's threatened, "revisit" last year's legislative redistricting. From a good public policy perspective, that's a good thing. Redistricting shouldn't be on the line in every election, to be engaged in whenever the majority changes.<br />
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In return, Democrats could probably agree to pass the incumbent protection Congressional redistricting plan that all the incumbent representatives signed off on last year. True some think that would lock in the current 8-3 Republican edge. I don't, because that edge isn't natural anyway. Virginia's not a 75% Republican state so there's no way the GOP will hold that kind of advantage long term. In the incumbent protection plan the 2nd District and, to a lesser extent, the 5th would remain "swingy." The 10th would also probably become a swing district once Rep. Frank Wolf retires. The Democrats could probably get a better deal out of the federal courts. They might still have that opportunity. Just because the "incumbent protection" plan passes the legislature doesn't mean it will clear the Obama Justice Department, which could very well prefer the Democratic plan which offered the possibility of electing another African-American to the U.S. House.<br />
This is a deal that could satisfy both sides. Nobody gets everything they want. Nobody gives up everything. That's sort of the point of a "power sharing" agreement. And it's the best both sides can probably get and still get on with the people's business. Democrats will have to recognize that they have lost the majority. And Republicans will have to recognize that 20 seats in a 40-member body don't justify 63% of the committee seats.<br />
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Both sides will have to recognize that they will have to compromise and cooperate to handle the range of complex issues, from the budget to uranium mining to highway funding to support for public and higher education that constitute the <em>real </em>work of the 2012 legislative session.Virginia Pundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14120407478348260731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3108256726595048581.post-26743978394245451722011-12-27T11:55:00.000-08:002011-12-27T11:55:22.635-08:00Republicans take some of the fun out of 2012 The fact that Newt Gingrich is leading the polls in the Virginia Republican Primary but didn't gather enough signatures to get on the ballot sort of sums up his presidential campaign so far in a nutshell.<br />
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But Gingrich wasn't the only candidate who failed to make the ballot. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, whose campaign thus far had seemed to be deficient in brainpower, charisma and debating skills, but not in money or organizational expertise, also failed to turn in enough signatures to qualify.<br />
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Michele Bachmann, John Huntsman and Rick Santorum didn't bother to turn in any signatures. Not much of a surprise for the latter two. They've just been hanging around. Neither has gotten a bump as the Republican's "flavor of the month" to be the Not-Mitt Romney candidate. Hell, even Donald Trump got a bump and he never got in.<br />
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In fact, only Romney and septuagenarian Libertarian Ron Paul made the ballot. The first is the definition of the smooth, well organized, Establishment Republican. Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling heads his campaign in Virginia and there wasn't much chance he wouldn't get the necessary signatures. The second is a cult figure who has never won much besides straw polls, but his Paulistas can managed a signature gathering campaign.<br />
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While Gingrich and, to a lesser extent, Perry and Bachmann have been whining about how tough Virginia's ballot access laws are -- they require 10,000 signatures, including 400 from each of the state's 11 congressional districts -- the fact is everyone knew what the rules were from the jump.<br />
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And how hard can it be? In 2008 Democratic candidates like Al Sharpton and Dennis Kucinich, neither of whom were exactly at the crest of a rising tide, made it onto Virginia's ballot.<br />
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They had help though. The Democratic Party of Virginia gathered signatures for all of the candidates at various events. The Republican Party of Virginia didn't make that kind of effort this year. They aren't required to, of course, but it might have helped.<br />
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Republican incompetency has taken a good deal of fun out of what could have been a very exciting year in politics here.<br />
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Because, if all the candidates -- of at least the ones with some following (sorry Huntsman and Santorum) -- had made it on to the ballot, the Virginia Republican Primary might have been very important.<br />
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Because, if Romney has some early defeats -- and poll numbers in Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina suggest that he might -- Virginia, where the Lt. Gov. Bolling chairs his campaign, might have been the state where Romney rallied and took control of the race. Virginia played that role for George W. Bush in 2000 and John McCain in 2008.<br />
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It can't play that role this time because, with only the quirky Paul n opposition, nobody will pay much attention to Virginia. The only thing of consequence that could happen here now is an embarrassing Romney defeat. That's unlikely. But remember Paul's cultists are going to vote no matter how hopeless the situation looks. And Virginia is an open primary state and, with an incumbent Democratic president in office, Virginia Democrats really don't have anything better to do on Primary Day than go out and vote for Paul in an attempt to humiliate the Republican front-runner.<br />
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And, through the rise and inevitable fall of each "Anti-Mitt" candidate, Bachmann and Perry and Herman Caine and Gingrich and maybe even Paul, Romney has been unable to seal the deal with more than 25 to 30% of Republican primary voters.<br />
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Gingrich put on a brave front and promised a write-in campaign. Until someone told him Virginia doesn't allow write-ins in a primary. Then, there was talk of legislation in the General Assembly to change that.<br />
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I doubt that will happen for three reasons:<br />
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1. It would require emergency legislation that would require the consent of a super-majority of the General Assembly. Democrats -- and Republicans supporting Romney or Paul -- don't have any reason to do Gingrich and company any favors.<br />
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2. In the unlikely event it passed the General Assembly, Gov. McDonnell would have to sign it. I'm pretty sure Bolling would take up permanent residence in the governor's outer office to make sure that didn't happen.<br />
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3. There's a reason that Virginia has a rule against write-ins in primaries. We're an open primary state, with no registration by party. Suppose we allowed write-in votes next year. Suppose 400,000 Republicans show up and 40% of them write in Gingrich and Romney gets 30% of the vote and Paul gets 15% and Perry gets 10% and Bachmann gets 5%. Then suppose 200,000 Democrats, who don't have anything better to do that day, show up and all of them vote for Barack Obama. Obama wins the Virginia Republican Primary.<br />
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Is that going to happen? No.<br />
We're just going to have a barely-noticed contest between Romney and Paul.<br />
And we could have been a contender...if any of the other Republicans were as well-organized as the Dennis Kucinich campaign in 2008.Virginia Pundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14120407478348260731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3108256726595048581.post-15132071049196525372011-11-17T12:40:00.000-08:002011-11-17T12:53:45.178-08:00Things we learned from last week's electionIt's so much easier to wax profound over an election once it's over.<br />
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For honesty's sake, I think I'm on record at various places online predicting that the Republicans would take control of the Senate, 21-19, that Del. Robin Abbott would win a squeaker in the 93rd House District and that Sen. John Miller would beat Republican Mickey Chohany in the 1st District -- and unlike some other people in my newsroom, I expected that 1st District race to be close.<br />
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It was and Miller won. Abbott lost a squeaker to Republican Mike Watson instead of winning one. In a higher turn out year, like a gubernatorial election, she probably would have won. And Republicans only forged a tie in the Senate at 20-20, although they are going to use Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling's tie-breaking vote to act like they are in the majority. More on that later.<br />
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So what did we learn from the 2011 election?<br />
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A few things:<br />
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<strong>1. It's possible to hold an election where nobody wins.</strong><br />
Obviously the Democrats didn't win, they're down to 32 seats in the House of Delegates and lost the majority in the Senate, their last hold on power at the state level. But you can' t really say the Republicans won. They <em>didn't </em>capture a majority in the Senate, although they were widely expected to. In the weeks leading up to the election I heard and read Republicans predicting that they'd take 25 or 26 seats. There was a Tea Party group set up called "Beyond 21." But they didn't even get to 21. In fact, of the 24 Senate races contested between the two parties (some of those contests being token opposition), Democrats won 16 and Republicans won only 8. Republicans were able to forge a tie in the Senate because they knocked off two incumbents, without any of their own incumbents being threatened, and because they won two open seats. But it's hard to say they <em>won </em>in the Senate when they lost 2/3 of the contested races.<br />
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2. <strong>Democrats in the House are in big trouble. For a long time.</strong><br />
While Democrats held their own or better in the Senate, the House races, which got far less attention, were a debacle. They're left with 32 seats. In contested House races, Republicans won 21-6-1 (Del. Lacey Putney, I-Bedford, the longest serving member of the House in history beat both a Democrat and a Republican to win re-election). It's scandalous that only 28 out of 100 House seats were contested between the parties and, again, some of those were token challenges. Democrats in the House suffered from a huge failure by the leadership, amplified by the Republican redistricting plan. They failed in recruitment so badly that <em>no</em> Republican incumbent member of the House was seriously challenged for re-election. Former House Minority Leader Ward Armstrong paid the prices for the "defense only" strategy. He lost. So did the other two targeted Democratic incumbents, Abbott and Del. Bill Barlow (D-64th). You can't win playing defense. It allowed the Republicans to take money they would otherwise have had to spend on incumbents and use it to win challenge and open seats. In the normal course of events, because Virginia is not a 68% Republican state, you'd expect the Democrats to start winning those seats back at the rate of 2-4 per election cycle. Problem is, that still leaves them in the minority when the next redistricting comes around and Republicans get to draw them back to square one. The best chance for a majority in the House Democrats have for the next 30 years is a Democratic landslide for governor. That hasn't happened in more than 25 years. After 30 years, demographic trends might give Democrats the majority back despite themselves.<br />
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<strong>3. 2011 was not 2010, so there's no reason to suppose that 2012 will be.</strong><br />
Republicans were predicting bigger gains than they got because they were fighting the last war. They were expecting the kind of Tea Party-fueled wave election that swept Republicans back into power in the House of Representatives last year. It didn't happen. One reason may have been that the Republicans in Congress have managed to damage the brand. While 2010's results were largely blamed on the unpopularity of President Barack Obama, the Republican House of Representatives is currently <em>less </em>popular than Obama. That suggests that Tea Party wave may have lost its momentum. So does current polling for the U.S. Senate race in Virginia in 2012, which shows former Gov. Tim Kaine, one of the president's staunchest allies, tied with former governor and Senator George Allen.<br />
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<strong>4. General Assembly elections are essentially local elections. They can't really be nationalized.</strong><br />
Despite attempts by Republicans to run on everything from cap and trade to Obamacare, General Assembly elections are decided by local issues. General Assembly members, unlike members of Congress, live in their districts. They spend most of their time in their home communities. Their constituents know them. It's hard to sell that electorate canned national negative advertising.<br />
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<strong>5. Rural Democrats are on extinction watch.</strong><br />
With the loss of Armstrong and Barlow in the House and Sen. Edd Houck and Sen. Roscoe Reynolds in the Senate, we can almost write an end to the story of Virginia's rural Democrats, who once controlled the levers of power in the state. At this point, with the exception of two Senate seats and one House seat, if it's rural, the Republicans own it. That's both good news and bad news for both parties. While obviously the Democrats would like to have more seats and the Republicans are happy to have the rural seats, the plain truth of the matter is that whoever holds those seats there will be fewer of them 30 years from now then there are today. Unless Virginia's demographic trends for the past 30 years turn completely around, the state will continue to become more urbanized and more diverse. Rural Virginia will continue to lose population to Northern Virginia and the rest of the Urban Crescent. That doesn't bode well for Republicans long term, unless they can find a way to reach out to minorities, urban dwellers and "come heres," groups they don't do well with now.<br />
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<strong>6. In politics it's never about principle, it's about whose ox is getting gored.</strong><br />
After failing to win a majority in the Senate, the first thing the Republicans did was claim that Bolling's vote actually gave them one. There's nothing wrong with that except that the last time the Senate was divided 20-20, they argued exactly the opposite. At that time the lieutenant governor was a Democrat, Don Beyer. Democrats proposed to do just what Republicans are going to do in January, use Beyer's tie-breaking vote to organize the Senate with themselves as a majority. The Republicans argued that they couldn't do that, because Beyer was not a "member elected to the Senate" and thus couldn't vote on organizational matters. They argued long and hard on the issue. I think they may even have come up with an attorney general's opinion that Beyer couldn't vote. The Democrats countered with a report on the issue by A.E. Dick Howard, the UVa professor who wrote the most recent version of the Virginia's Constitution saying that Beyer could vote. Ironically, when I asked new Senate "Majority Leader" Tommy Norment last week how he justified arguing that Bolling could vote, he cited that report from Howard. I think Republicans probably are right that Bolling can vote to break the ties. I just wish they'd have the intellectual honesty to admit they were wrong in 1996.<br />
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<strong>7. Sometimes it's better to be lucky than to be good.</strong><br />
Given the abysmal failure of leadership and recruiting by the Democrats, it's amazing that they managed to break even in the Senate. The leadership needs to be shaken up from party chair Brian Moran to Senate Democratic Leader Dick Saslaw. To go into an important legislative election posing no challenge to <em>any </em>of the oppositions' incumbents is insane. Managing to get out of it with a tie is the equivalent of drawing to an inside straight and making it. While the Democrats are looking for new leaders, maybe they should think about getting a message too. It's something they haven't had for the last 25 years. The only unified theme that Virginia Democrats have had in that time is "We're not Republicans." There are years when that's enough. But most years it isn't. Virginia Republicans have a message. And it's simple. It's "We will not raise your taxes, no matter what." You can argue that that message doesn't always apply to the state's circumstances. You'd be right. You can argue that, at it's worst, that message panders to people's selfishness and their worst instincts. It can. But it's a message. There's an old saying in politics that "You can't beat something with nothing." Virginia Democrats need to stop testing the truth of that saying and find some principles they can agree on.Virginia Pundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14120407478348260731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3108256726595048581.post-10433559618506844142011-10-28T14:17:00.000-07:002011-10-28T14:17:40.443-07:00Ten things that are plucking my last nerveOn Facebook, I usually call this "Things I Hate." But I'll try to confine myself to political topics here and we'll just say these are things that are on my nerves, as the 2011 campaign rushes to a close and the 2012 presidential election kicks into gear.<br />
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1. The assertion, generally by Republicans, that a requirement to bring photo ID to the polls has something to do with curbing "voter fraud." One candidate even said in debate the other night that voter fraud was on the rise in Virginia. When asked to provide an example he, of course, could not. Look, you don't steal an election where the votes are cast, you steal it where the votes are counted. Anybody who gave this issue about ten seconds of thought would realize you can't fix an election by voting fake voters. It's too cumbersome, requires too many people to be in on the scheme. It's a silly idea. We've had three presidential elections in this country that might have been stolen -- 1880, 1960 and 2000. If they were, they were all stolen after the polls closed. So, when Republicans get serious about voting machines with computer software that can't be easily hacked and paper trails to allow an accurate recount, I'll believe they care about "voter fraud." Until then, they're just trying to suppress the vote.<br />
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2. Stupid campaign charges. I've got to call out Sen. John Miller's campaign on this one. Miller (D-1st), who's been accused of having a conflict of interest for taking a job with a local aviation company after voting for a bill that gave them a tax break, accused his Republican opponent Mickey Chohany of having a bigger conflict. The issue? That Chohany twice voted for street improvements on the street where his restaurant is located. Look, I've been in that business, I understand "Deny, deny and make counter accusations," but make them sensible. The street improvements were included in packages of citywide street projects that were recommended by the city administration, not Chohany. It's like saying a City Council member has a conflict because he votes to repave every street in the city, including the one he lives one. For the record, the allegation against Miller is more serious. I don't think it rises to the Phil Hamilton level of a violation of the conflict of interest laws that needs to be prosecuted. There's no evidence of quid pro quo. At the same time, it looks bad and -- if in my opinion -- he shouldn't have done it.<br />
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3. Republican presidential debates. The only person more exhausted than I am by the multitude of debates is apparently Rick Perry. I might join him in his resolve to ignore some of them. Of course that won't have the consequences for me that it will for him. If you can't win a debate against Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann, you aren't going to stand much of a chance against Barack Obama.<br />
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4. The way some people who cheered on the Tea Party rallies last year, mock the Occupy Wall Street rallies this year. And, I suppose, vice versa. Before the Tea Party got co-opted by the Republican Party, it expressed a lot of the same populist outrage that Occupy Wall Street does. In my view, this is a country long in need of a little healthy populist outrage. The nightmare of the powers-that-be is that the Occupy Wall Street folks and the Tea Partiers might realize that they're mad at some of the same people. That graphic going around the Internet isn't a total joke; there is an intersection of interest between the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street around the too chummy relationship between government and business.<br />
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5. Michele Bachmann. Voice like a razor blade, crazy eyes and crazier ideas. Come back, Sarah Palin, all is forgiven.<br />
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<br />
<a name='more'></a>6. The Super Committee. This is a joke and might as well fold up its road show right now. Tasked with finding a way to cut the budget and reduce the debt, this group was never going to get anything accomplished. Because the Republican half of it doesn't want anything accomplished. They don't want to give Obama any kind of victory before 2012. If truth be told, they don't want the economy to improve by 2012 because they see beating Obama as more important. So there's not going to be any deal unless Obama and the Democrats are willing to accept a totally Republican deal, all cuts and no revenue. I can't see where there's any point in doing that now. Obama's better off running as Harry Truman against the "do-nothing" Republicans. <br />
<br />
7. Eric Cantor. Since I've recently moved, the House Majority Leader is my new congressman. He recently cancelled a speech when he found out the event was open to the public. I guess "The Champion of the Overdog" can't be expected to consort with the riff raff.<br />
<br />
8. The Virginia Associated Press. They scheduled a 2012 U.S. Senate debate and only invited Tim Kaine and George Allen. Look, I don't have any doubt that Kaine and Allen will win their respective nominations. But it's not the job of the press to declare that the case more than six months before Primary Day. We're not allowed to decide "Hey, we're bored with all this primary stuff, let's just move on to the general elections now." It's our job to report the news, not to make it.<br />
<br />
9. Campaign finance reports. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad we have them. Virginia Public Access Project does a great job of organizing them and getting them out there. I'm just sick of looking at them. And writing about them. And I'm beginning to think we don't learn that much from them. Except for pointing out the candidates who totally have no chance, ("I'm going to run a grassroots campaign and not worry about how much money I raise," means "I'm not really trying to win."), I'm not sure the time reporters spend pouring over them, like shamans pouring over the entrails of the sacrifice looking for wisdom, is justified.<br />
<br />
10. Gerrymandering. We've got 140 seats in the General Assembly up for election this year, and I could have told you 120 of the winners a month ago. There are too few seats being contested between the two parties and too few of those are serious contests. That's because we've decided to let the politicians pick their voters. That's not the way our Founding Fathers envisioned the system. Republicans will gain the most from that this year, because House Republicans drew a more competent gerrymander than Senate Democrats. But it won't always be that way. Politics, particularly in the Old Dominion, are cyclical. What goes around comes around. That applies to swings of the partisan pendulum and swings of the gerrymander ax. Maybe one day the majority party will be forward thinking enough to go for non-partisan redistricting before the cycle swings back around on them.<br />
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Cross posted to <a href="http://blog.vivianpaige.com/">All Politics Is Local.</a>Virginia Pundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14120407478348260731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3108256726595048581.post-27189976801963588242011-10-20T12:38:00.000-07:002011-10-20T12:43:46.278-07:00The end of Republicans as we have known them?Former Williamsburg City Councilman Mickey Chohany is facing off against incumbent Democratic Senator John Miller for the 1st District seat in this fall's elections.<br />
<br />
There are a lot of things you can say about Chohany as a candidate. Based on recent debate performances, you might say he's not ready for prime time. You might say he's a stalking horse for Sen. Tommy Norment (R-3rd) and that if he's elected Norment will effectively have two votes in the Senate. (Although if we were going to give a Republican senator two votes, I'd argue that Norment -- who at least understands the importance of governance -- isn't a bad choice. I'd rather he had two votes than Sen. Steve Newman.).<br />
<br />
But the odd thing that some people <em>are </em>saying about Chohany is that he's RINO (Republican In Name Only). <br />
<br />
I'm not sure on what basis anybody is saying this. Is it guilt by association because he's an ally of Norment, who has also been called a RINO?<br />
<br />
Because, on the issues, Chohany seems to meet all the Republican litmus tests. He's pro-life, pro-gun and anti-tax. He's tried a straddle on gay rights, but it's the same straddle that Virginia Republicans, and voters, let Gov. Bob McDonnell get away with.<br />
<br />
Are guns or abortion what got Chohany (or Norment) into politics? No. But that doesn't mean they aren't Republicans.<br />
<br />
This stupidity has gone so far that some in the right-wing blogosphere are calling for a write-in campaign for Tricia Stall. In case you don't remember Ms. Stall, she's a right-wing Republican who took out another "RINO", Sen. Marty Williams in a primary in 2007 only to lose to Miller in the general election. She lost that election in a 1st District that was far more Republican than the current configuration. Tricia Stall not only has no chance to win as a write-in, she couldn't win if she was on the ballot. She couldn't come close. A vote for her is a vote for John Miller.<br />
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Chohany might win. More likely, given the nature of the district now, he won't But at least he stands a chance.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
That's why the Republican Party put up a candidate closer to the middle like Chohany.<br />
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Is Chohany a Tea Partier? Well, no. He and Norment are both Chamber of Commerce Republicans. Which is to say that they are what Republicans always were for most of the 20th Century, people who are primarily concerned with low taxes and less government regulation and believe that what's good for the business is good for the country.<br />
<br />
Until about 1980, Chamber of Commerce Republicans were basically the only kind of Republicans. Even Ronald Reagan, the poster child of the "movement conservatives," was mostly interested in keeping taxes low and cutting government regulations. Sure, he gave some lip service to the social issues that move Christian Conservatives, but he didn't do anything about them.<br />
<br />
And not every Republican needs to. It's hard for me to see how the Virginia Republican Party is better for having purged folks like former Delegates Panny Rhodes and Preston Bryant or former Sen. John Chichester, people who certainly <em>were </em>Republicans in the sense of what Republican meant from Dwight Eisenhower through the first George Bush and were among the most thoughtful legislators in Richmond but somehow weren't Republican <em>enough</em> for Virginia purists.<br />
<br />
If Republicans have decided that <em>every </em>nominee has to be a Tea Partier, or a 2nd Amendment zealot or a home schooler or a proselytizing abortion opponent, the Republican Party is going to change drastically from what we've known it as. It's going to lead to a lot more candidates like Tricia Stall and Christine O'Donnell and Sharon Angle. And, I'd argue that it's going to mean they win a lot less elections.<br />
<br />
Because those Chamber of Commerce Republicans who irritate the GOP base, like center-right Democratic moderates who irritate the Democratic base, are the only representatives of their party that many moderate independents -- who hold the swing vote in most contested elections -- will vote for. <br />
<br />
Republicans are playing out this silly melodrama on the national stage as well. Former pizza company executive Herman Cain has become the latest weekly favorite in the "Please God, stop us before we nominate Mitt Romney" sweepstakes. <br />
<br />
Republicans have a problem. Since Romney was the runner-up to John McCain for the nomination in 2008, it's his "turn" to run for president. That's usually the way Republicans pick their nominee. But Romney so offends the base -- he's flip-flopped on abortion and he backed a state-level version of health care reform as governor of Massachusetts that included the individual mandate that Republicans hate (although it was originally their idea). Romney was the front-runner in most early polls. That's sent more conservative Republicans on the quest for a "Great Right Hope" for 2012 that's already churned through Donald Trump, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry. It led some Republicans to hope that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie would jump in the race, even though he has more "moderate baggage" than Romney and other to wish that Sarah Palin would quit her reality-TV star gig to run.<br />
<br />
The funny thing about this is that Romney has consistently run better in head-to-head polls against President Barack Obama than other Republicans -- although even he runs less well than "generic Republican."<br />
<br />
I think Romney would stand a pretty good chance of beating Obama next year. I don't think any of the other announced Republicans -- or the unannounced Palin -- would.<br />
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It will be interesting to see if Republicans decide they'd rather win than be "Right."<br />
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Cross posted to <a href="http://blog.vivianpaige.com/">All Politics Is Local</a>.Virginia Pundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14120407478348260731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3108256726595048581.post-25762177982776663522011-09-15T09:40:00.000-07:002011-09-15T10:49:03.369-07:00Governor going after state employees ...again.<em>[Note: Yes, I know I've been a little slack in updating the blog. Chalk it up to selling a house (sort of), buying a house, sloth, an earthquake, a hurricane and other writing projects. I promise to be more diligent. Until I'm not.]</em><br />
<br />
Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell announced this week that <a href="http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/virginia-politics/2011/sep/14/tdmain01-governor-hints-at-further-vrs-changes-ar-1307618/">state employee retirement benefits</a> might need to be cut, because the system has $18 billion in unfunded liabilities.<br />
<br />
He's right about the unfunded liability. Over the next 75 years it does total $18 billion.<br />
<br />
But that's not the state employees' fault.<br />
<br />
McDonnell has done little to endear himself to state employees. Last year he pushed a measure to require them to pick up part of their own retirement costs. <br />
<br />
That doesn't sound unreasonable on the face of it. Why shouldn't they pick up part of the cost? But the way McDonnell structured his proposal, it would have cut the take home pay of every state employee. The General Assembly intervened and gave state employees a pay raise sufficient to offset the retirement contribution. That was in line with the original deal which led to the state picking up the employees' contribution -- it was done in lieu of a raise.<br />
<br />
The legislature showed much better common sense and a greater sense of justice than the governor on this issue.<br />
<br />
It's odd that McDonnell, who doesn't have the reflexive anti-government instincts of a lot of Republicans -- former governors George Allen and Jim Gilmore for instance -- would be taking another swing at state employees.<br />
<br />
Maybe McDonnell, recently chosen to lead the Republican Governor's Association, feels he need to do it to have some street cred with his peers. From Scott Walker in Wisconsin to Rick Scott in Florida to Chris Christie in New Jersey, it seems like wherever you have a new Republican governor these days, he's at war with his state employees.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br />
But still, if the Virginia Retirement System is $18 billion short, that's serious isn't it?<br />
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Well, yes, it is.<br />
<br />
But the question is, <em>why </em>is the retirement system short?<br />
<br />
And the answer is that Virginia's political class -- of which Bob McDonnell is a lifetime member -- has treated the retirement system as a piggy bank and unofficial rainy day fund. Both Democrats and Republicans alike, in the governor's mansion and in the legislature, have felt free to stiff VRS when they ran short of cash for other priorities in the budget.<br />
<br />
Until recently, tremendous investment performance by the VRS trust fund veiled the damage this was causing.<br />
<br />
McDonnell himself signed off on the latest such travesty, when the state underpaid VRS by more than $600 million two years ago. McDonnell had the nerve to claim later that year that he'd "balanced" the budget without raising taxes. Sure. If I didn't make my mortgage payment, it would be pretty easy to "balance" my household budget as well. The mortgage company would probably take a dim view of that approach, however.<br />
<br />
The Commonwealth is due to begin repaying VRS for that skipped payment in 2013. Conveniently, that's also McDonnell's last year in office.<br />
<br />
Hmmm, repaying the money that was "withheld" from the fund. That's an idea. That seems fiscally prudent doesn't it?<br />
<br />
Maybe the governor is right. Maybe we do need to consider cuts in VRS benefits -- maybe we do need to tell our state employees that the Commonwealth's promises aren't worth the paper they are printed on. Maybe we need to break the deal we've made with employees just as private companies across the country have. (Oh, so <em>that's </em>what Republicans mean when they say they want government to operate more like a business).<br />
<br />
Yeah, maybe. Maybe we should do that right <em>after </em>the governor and the General Assembly return every dime that was due to VRS that hasn't been paid in over the past 50 years. <br />
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Maybe that would be the time to ask employees to sacrifice. Right after the state lives up to its <em>obligations.</em><br />
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<em>Cross posted at <a href="http://blog.vivianpaige.com/">All Politics Is Local</a>.</em>Virginia Pundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14120407478348260731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3108256726595048581.post-15283893801150336582011-07-21T11:10:00.000-07:002011-07-21T11:25:16.582-07:00Washington is psychotic<em>"You'll get mesmerized /By alibis/ And limbo dance in pairs/ Please lock that door/It don't make much sense/That common sense/Don't make no sense/No more</em>"<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>John Prine</strong></div><div style="text-align: center;"><em>"Common Sense"</em></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div>It's hard to believe that people we elected to represent us and who swore to act in the best interest of the United States and its citizens could have pushed the country to the brink of default just to make a political point.<br />
<br />
But it's true.<br />
<br />
With about ten days to go until the Aug. 2 deadline for raising the debt ceiling, Washington has shown that it's gone from being dysfunctional to being psychotic.<br />
<br />
Our capital and our government have been dysfunctional for a number of years due to the inability of Democrats and Republicans to work together on anything. That had negative effects on the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, but the cancer of partisanship has metastasized in Barack Obama's administration.<br />
<br />
There's enough blame to go around for both sides. But in the debt ceiling debate, the Republicans are acting crazier than the Democrats.<br />
<br />
While Obama has laid out plans that include up to $4.5 trillion in deficit reduction over the next ten years, Republicans have turned them down flat. Why? Because, in addition to a lot of spending cuts that would trim programs that help lower and middle-income families, Obama has included tax increases on corporation and one the wealthiest Americans.<br />
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So have the "Gang of Six" in the Senate, which includes Virginia's Mark Warner. <br />
<br />
<br />
But Republicans, who have clamored loudest about the deficit (which they discovered about the time Obama was sworn in), have said that deficit and debt reduction needs to be done with budget cuts only. Some of the cuts they advocate are sweeping and would change Medicare and Social Security, as we know them.<br />
<br />
<br />
It's an example of just how unserious about deficit reduction they are. As recently as January they fought tooth and nail to retain the Bush era tax cuts, which contribute to the deficit.<br />
This attitude led <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CCEQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2011%2F07%2F05%2Fopinion%2F05brooks.html&ei=SWgoToybEvHEsQKSzrk7&usg=AFQjCNEHHC9mp52gzZdd_VWkTHFhHY7nNQ">David Brooks</a>, a mainstream Republican columnist, to say that Republicans aren't operating more like a normal political party.<br />
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He's got a point.<br />
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Republicans are now acting more like a religious cult than a political party. They've raised a "no tax increases ever" ideology to level of Gospel. It's the Church of Ronald Reagan, except that it's run by people who have made commandments out of a few of the dumbest things Reagan ever said and ignore what he actually did while in office.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
Because Reagan raised taxes when he felt he needed to. And the debt ceiling? It was raised <em>17 times</em> during the Reagan administration. It was routinely raised under other presidents, Republicans and Democrats alike.<br />
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<br />
So why the hold up now? If you're cynic, you might almost think that Republicans are trying to make the economy worse before the 2012 elections.<br />
<br />
But let's not infer bad motives, where incompetence and stupidity will suffice.<br />
<br />
<br />
Let's assume that Republicans really are concerned about the level of the budget deficit and the national debt. In that case, they should be falling all over themselves to accept Obama's offer, which entails real long-term fiscal reform.<br />
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He's offered cuts that will be very unpopular with Democratic constituencies.<br />
<br />
But apparently that's not as important as tax increases on the rich.<br />
I'm not crazy about some of Obama's tax ideas. I think, frankly, it would be good for the economy to get rid of the corporate income tax, which is a hidden tax on American consumers on one hand and only encourages companies to move profits off shore on the other. You could make up that revenue by taxing dividend, interest and capital gains income (except on the sale of a principal residence) at the same rate as wages and salary and re-instituting the estate tax.<br />
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Obama is calling a revenue and cuts approach "shared sacrifice." It's actually not fully shared since the cuts to program that benefit lower income Americans are a much bigger than the taxes on upper income Americans. But at least it's an attempt to say "We are all in this together."<br />
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It's one most Americans get, according to the polls.<br />
<br />
It's one consistent with the facts, since the current fiscal problems are caused both by spending at 25% of Gross Domestic Product, a level last reached in World War II and in federal tax revenues that are at only 14.8% of GDP, while they hovered around 18% for decades. <em>No one</em> is advocating continuing to spend at the level we have for the last three years when we've done TARP (which saved the country from Depression and is the last time Democrats and Republicans came together for the national good), the stimulus package (which didn't stimulate the economy as much as was hoped), the auto company bailout and fought 2 1/2 wars. But Republicans are proposing to struggle along on the same historically low percentage of revenue.<br />
<br />
But the shared sacrifices model is not one Republicans in Congress are willing to go along with. Instead, they've pushed the country toward default. Rating agencies are taking a look at downgrading U.S. debt. One small rating agency has already done so. If America's bond rating falls, so will bond ratings for the states, including Virginia's cherished AAA rating.<br />
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That will be the least of the effects of failing to raise the debt ceiling. U.S. default will likely trigger a new financial panic worldwide, ending the economy's fragile recovery. Even by flirting with the specter of default, Congress has weakened the economy.<br />
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But that's not the reason that members of Congress should be ashamed of themselves.<br />
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They should be ashamed because they've let the country get into this position and because some of them have been saying it "wouldn't be so bad" if America defaulted?<br />
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Wouldn't be so bad?<br />
<br />
Forget the dire financial consequences that would follow a U.S. default as surely as night follows day. We don't default for the same reason that we don't torture captives or censor people's mail or lock them up without trials. Because we're America and we're better than that.<br />
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<br />
The fact that some members of Congress don't think we're any different from some third-rate banana republic that won't pay its bills makes my blood boil. <br />
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Some of the same people who appear so unconcerned about the prospect of American default have voted to make it harder for individual Americans to file for bankruptcy. It's okay for the country but not for individuals? Does that make sense?<br />
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<br />
This is an especially bitter pill to swallow as it's served up by the party that loudly proclaims its faith in "American Exceptionalism." Isn't the fact that we are the world's lender of last resort, the one safe oasis where anybody in the world can park their money, part of what makes us exceptional? Isn't the fact that the "full faith and credit of the United States" still means something part of why we're exceptional?<br />
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I don't understand how anybody who's a patriot could joke about, much less seriously consider, allowing America to default. But then I don't understand why anybody who is a patriot would bet against America by buying into a fund that shorted U.S. Treasury notes either. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who has positioned himself as the chief stumbling block to an agreement, did that.<br />
<br />
<br />
Even if common sense prevails and the debt ceiling is raised before the deadline, the struggle has done damage to the economy. And it's spotlighted the inability of the two parties to get beyond ideological struggles and do the people's business. The concept of the "loyal opposition" is long gone from our political lexicon. The inability, of either party, to accept the results of elections and move on is an ominous symptom of Washington's political psychosis.<br />
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Cross posted at <a href="http://blog.vivianpaige.com/">All Politics Is Local.</a>Virginia Pundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14120407478348260731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3108256726595048581.post-8085656465903149452011-06-16T11:11:00.000-07:002011-06-16T11:11:13.082-07:00Finding a way to govern againI read a fascinating article in <em>The Atlantic</em> this week called <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/07/how-to-turn-republicans-and-democrats-into-americans/8521/">"How to Turn Republicans and Democrats into Americans." </a><br />
<br />
It's written by Mickey Edwards a former Republican congressman from Oklahoma.<br />
<br />
I think Edwards has articulated what many of us have come to suspect of the two parties, that they are more interested in vying with each other for political power than they are in actually doing what it takes to govern the county. A large part of what it takes is compromise. We don't see that out of members of Congress who are increasingly selected from one-party districts or by primary electorates who hold positions far to the left or right of the general public.<br />
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Edwards notes that when Nancy Pelosi became Speaker of the House she said her job was to elect more Democrats and that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said the most important thing that Republicans could do with their increased numbers after 2010 was to insure the defeat of Barack Obama in 2012.<br />
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Really? The county is involved in three (and counting) wars, the unemployment rate is north of 9% and the most important thing the parties have to do is score political points off each other?<br />
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As Edwards notes, campaigning has become perpetual in Congress, at the expense of governing.<br />
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He worries that Congress has virtually ceased to function as an independent branch of government. The members of Congress in the party that holds the presidency have become almost an auxiliary part of the executive branch and the other party the reflexive opposition to the executive.<br />
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Which should concern everyone, liberal, conservative or moderate.<br />
<br />
While both parties are fond at times of saying that this or that branch or department of government has overstepped "its Constitutional bounds," the parties themselves are well beyond their Constitutional roles.<br />
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Because the Constitution gives them <em>no</em> role.<br />
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<br />
<a name='more'></a>The framers of the Constitution warned about the dangers of factions and parties, even as they were dividing into just such factions. <br />
<br />
As Edwards points out the parties, in Constitutional terms, are nothing more than private social clubs. But they are private social clubs that have usurped the machinery of government to pursue their own agendas, which aren't always in the best interest of America.<br />
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They've done that despite the fact that "independent" is a more popular party designation than either "Democrat" or "Republican."<br />
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And they've found a way to make the rest of us pay for it.<br />
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Primary laws were adopted in many of the state in the early 20th century. The motive for their adoption was noble -- to decrease the influence of party "bosses" in picking nominees and open the process up to wider electorate.<br />
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But in the process, they shifted the burden of paying for the nominating processes of the Democratic and Republican parties -- and <em>only</em> the Democratic and Republican parties -- to taxpayers. So if you belong to the Libertarian Party or the Green Party or the Constitution Party or you consider yourself an independent with no party, you pay to help pick the Democratic and Republican candidates. If you're a Democrat, you helped pay to pick John McCain to run as the Republican candidate for president in 2008. If you're a Republican you helped subsidize the process that chose Barack Obama.<br />
<br />
The two parties, while they can't agree on much else, can agree to conspire to maintain their two-party monopoly. They've done this by passing onerous ballot access laws that make it difficult for independent or minor party candidates to get on the ballot. They've co-operated on a federal presidential debates commission that tries to make sure only the two major party candidates get the free publicity of televised presidential debates. State-level debates often follow similar rules.<br />
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It doesn't have to be this way. It wasn't all that long ago that it wasn't.<br />
<br />
Although both were highly partisan, Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neil could set aside their political differences to work together to help save Social Security, a degree of co-operation we'd never see in today's hyperpartisan environment.<br />
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Edwards has six suggestions to help fix the problem:<br />
<ul><li>break the power of partisans to keep candidates off the general election ballot. Open primaries are one way to do this.</li>
<li>turn over redistricting to independent, nonpartisan commissions.</li>
<li>reduce the power of the majority in the House to stop the minority from offering amendments to bills</li>
<li>create minority co-chairs for all committees, with the power to call a bill up for a vote and to call committee witnesses.</li>
<li>fill committee vacancies by lot. This would keep the parties from punishing their maverick members with poor committee assignments.</li>
<li>choose congressional committee staff solely on the basis of professional accomplishment, not partisan affiliation. While congressmen could pick their own aides as they wish, committee staff should be filled with experts on the subject area, not partisan attack dogs or yes men.</li>
</ul><br />
While I think all of Edward's suggestions have merit, I'm not as confident as he is that they'd fix the problem.<br />
<br />
I think that will take a change of hearts, among both our political leaders and ourselves. We have to stop electing people who are merely tools of their party. And the folks we elect have to know we mean that. That doesn't mean that we'd pick everybody from the middle of the political spectrum. It means we'd pick people who have the integrity to stick with their own beliefs no matter what the party talking point of the day is.<br />
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That would mean that folks who are "deficit hawks" would be against high deficits no matter which party was in the White House. It would mean that politicians who thought the individual mandate for health care insurance was a good idea when a Republican proposed it would still think it's a good idea when proposed by a Democrat. And that a politician who opposed our penal colony at Guantanamo Bay, the Patriot Act and commitment of U.S. ground forces to the Middle East by a Republican president would still oppose those policies when carried on by a Democratic president.<br />
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And it would mean members of Congress would have to learn to care quite a bit less about their own power and quite a bit more about the well being of the citizens they were elected to represent.<br />
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Cross posted to <a href="http://blog.vivianpaige.com/">All Politics Is Local</a>Virginia Pundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14120407478348260731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3108256726595048581.post-66487049671294610472011-05-02T12:36:00.000-07:002011-05-02T12:54:39.967-07:00Now that Bin Laden in dead, what's next?Nearly every American hailed the news late Sunday evening that American Special Forces had killed Osama Bin Laden in a raid on his safe house in Pakistan.<br />
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<br />
Democrats, Republicans, Tea Parties, Greens, independents, we were all brought together in a way that we really haven't been since 9/11 itself.<br />
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That excludes a few, who in the tradition of 9/11 "truthers" and "birthers," decided that the Osama had not really been killed and that it was all an elaborate political hoax. I dub this new crop of morons "deathers." I'm sure we'll hear a lot from them in the next couple of years.<br />
<br />
For those of us grounded in reality, the question becomes, what's next? What effect does justice finally catching up with the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have on the world?<br />
<br />
Well, from a crass political perspective it probably makes it more likely that President Barack Obama is re-elected in 2012. The odds had been leaning that way anyway, given the lack of a popular challenger on the Republican side. Even Republicans don’t seem enamored with their likely candidates.<br />
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With Obama having corrected the largest failing of both his and his predecessor's administrations, he'll see a surge in his poll numbers. However, military success doesn't always lead to re-election. If it did, the first President Bush would have been re-elected in the wake of Desert Storm.<br />
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The details of Bin Laden's capture -- he was found in a more than $1 million compound in a wealthy suburb of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad that U.S. sources described it as an area where numerous retired Pakistani military officers lived -- are troubling. The compound was built in 2005, apparently to house Bin Laden.<br />
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Those facts make it almost unthinkable that the Pakistani government, which has taken billions of dollars in U.S. "anti-terrorism" assistance and was officially our "ally" in the war on terror, knew where he was hiding and didn't tell us.<br />
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That suggests the need for, at the least, a re-thinking of our relationship with Pakistan. That re-thinking may have begun when we didn't inform them of the operation against Bin Laden until it was over.<br />
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In a larger sense, the end of Osama Bin Laden could well mean it's time to re-think our entire Afghanistan deployment.<br />
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It may even be time to question if the era of the "War on Terror" is over.<br />
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We went into Afghanistan to get Bin Laden.<br />
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We invaded the country after the Taliban government refused to turn him over. And we had every right to do that.<br />
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The other part of our mission was to destroy the ability of Al Qaeda to launch terrorist attacks on the West.<br />
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Indications are that we've been pretty successful at that. With drone attacks and U.S. forces on the ground we've killed the "#3 man in Al Qaeda" so many times it's surprising anyone would accept a promotion to that post any more. We've seriously degraded Al Qaeda’s ability to communicate with or control operatives abroad.<br />
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That can be seen in the amateurish level of the attacks the group can take credit for since 9/11.<br />
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But somehow our mission in Afghanistan has shifted. Now, we care about keeping the Taliban from returning to power and we talk about wanting to build a viable country there.<br />
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Afghanistan had 5,000 years to become a non-failed state before we went there and the Afghanis have consistently and ferociously fought off that threat. Look, compared to their hatred of centralized government, our Tea Partiers are avid New Dealers. .<br />
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It's time to let the people of Afghanistan get back to ruining their own country, just as we've begun to get out of Iraq, even though it likely collapses into sectarian chaos once we leave. They'll work it out on their own time, probably by separating into the tribal factions that represent the real countries there better than some lines drawn through the sand by some Europeans in the Age of Empires.<br />
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It's not our problem.<br />
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What is our problem?<br />
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Taking our country and our civil liberties back.<br />
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In the wake of 9/11, the United States instituted security measures to make sure that "another 9/11" didn't happen.<br />
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Ironically, we easily solved that problem. A simple, relatively cheap solution that didn't violate anyone's constitutional rights or subject granny to being felt up by TSA mall cops, a solution that we should have thought of 25 years earlier, insured that there could never be "another 9/11." We put bulletproof doors on airliner cockpits and locked the cockpits doors during flight.<br />
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That's all it took. That ended the "hijack the plane and crash it into something" threat forever. <br />
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Nobody’s really tried to hijack a plane since. Instead they've tried to blow them up.<br />
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While I realize this would be little comfort to the victims in the exploded plane or their families, that limits the possible loss of life to the passenger and crew. Which limits the gesture's effectiveness as a terrorist attack.<br />
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Think how we were riveted to our television screens when the Twin Towers fell. That's what terrorists want. A plane blows up? That just makes people in the West angry without sending any big symbolic message to the world.<br />
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It's also worth noting that the two highest-profile plane bombers -- the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber -- were apprehended by passengers. They weren't stopped by the TSA goon squad, which in nearly ten years is responsible for preventing exactly zero acts of terrorism.<br />
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The TSA is just one element of our huge overreaction to the threat of "International Radical Muslim Terrorism."<br />
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We've okayed wireless searches, torture, extraordinary rendition, holding people for years without trials and suspended the presumption of innocence for every air traveler. In the name of American Exceptionalism we've done a lot of things that make us less exceptional.<br />
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When we look back on these things in 50 years, we'll regret them, the way we regret the internment of the Japanese during World War II or Jim Crow. We'll regret them the way we always regret it when we let fear compromise our ideals.<br />
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That's why I say, now that the terrorist mastermind is dead, it's a good time for us to take back our country.<br />
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This is America. We beat the Nazis without revoking the Sixth Amendment.<br />
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This is America. We beat the Soviet Union, which had the power to destroy the world, without letting rent-a-cops grope our citizens.<br />
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This is America. The most powerful nation on earth with a military larger than the next several countries combined.<br />
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This is America, and a few religious fanatics with a 10th-century mindset do not pose an existential threat to this country.<br />
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To the extent that there are threats in the world -- rogue nations with, or close to achieving nuclear weapons, a few under armed thugs who may try to avenge Bin Laden's death -- let us meet them with the courage that we've always shown in the past.<br />
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It's time for the fear to end. Because terrorists can only win if we are terrorized.<br />
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Cross posted to <a href="http://blog.vivianpaige.com/">All Politics Is Local</a><br />
.Virginia Pundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14120407478348260731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3108256726595048581.post-86696579824385362552011-04-11T10:28:00.000-07:002011-04-11T10:28:46.527-07:00Senate slugfest loomsWith former Gov. Tim Kaine announcing last week that he plans to run for the Senate seat being vacated by Democrat Jim Webb in 2012, a potential slobberknocker of a U.S. Senate race is shaping up. One that could decide partisan control of the Senate.<br />
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Kaine isn't a lock for the Democratic nomination -- yet. Third District Congressmen Bobby Scott has said he'll announce in June or July if he's interested in the seat. A Kaine/Scott Democratic primary would likely be closely fought. But I'd be surprised to see Scott enter the race now that Kaine is in. He doesn't have a lot to gain and he'd be giving up a pretty safe House seat.<br />
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So, the smart money is on Kaine as the Democratic nominee.<br />
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The same is true of former Gov. and Sen. George Allen, the man Webb beat in 2006, on the Republican side.<br />
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Allen does have opposition for the nomination. Tea Party activist Jamie Radtke has announced, as have two even lesser known candidates. Rumor has conservative gadfly Del. Bob Marshall, who lost a bid for the Senate nomination in 2008, and anti-illegal immigration activist Prince William Board of Supervisors Chairman Corey Stewart, eyeing the race. A trial balloon for Rep. Rob Wittman (R-1st) went up a few weeks ago, but garnered little attention.<br />
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While polling a year away from the primary date doesn't mean all that much, Allen easily leads all announced or rumored candidates now. That's not surprising. As the star of Virginia Republicans resurgence in the 1990s, he has far higher name recognition than his opponents.<br />
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You'd have to think the nomination is Allen's to lose. But then, he lost an election in 2006 that was his to lose.<br />
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Republicans obviously hope that voter memories of "the macaca incident," in which Allen referred to a Webb staffer with an obscure racial slur, are short. That might not be his biggest problem on that score. The real damage from that incident was that it resurfaced a number of complaints over the years, from Allen's affection for using the "n word" in college, to his addressing a white supremacist group, to the confederate flag and noose that he once displayed in his law offices, which suggest he has problems with black people. While the individual instances might not amount to much, there's so much smoke around Allen on these issues that it's hard to believe there isn't at least a small fire.<br />
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That might not be the kind of candidate you want to be running in 2012, when the nation's first African American president is up for re-election.<br />
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Democrats have to hope that Allen's personal quirks and his undistinguished six years in the Senate are the focus of the campaign.<br />
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Because if Kaine is their nominee, it likely sets up a Republican campaign designed to contrast Allen's and Kaine's records as governor.<br />
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That's a comparison that isn't good for Kaine.<br />
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Whatever one may think of the quality of Allen's accomplishments as governor, there's no doubt that there were simply <em>more </em>of them.<br />
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While the state was flush with revenue during Allen's term, Kaine's four years as governor were marked by austerity budgets that didn't really please anyone, Democrat or Republican.<br />
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Allen's major issue when he ran for governor was reforming the state's "liberal, lenient parole system." While one can argue if his reforms were as effective and as cost efficient as they could have been, the fact is that he got that done. He can also tout signing the state's law on parental notification in case of a minor's abortion, which finally passed on his watch after an 18-year fight, and designing the state's welfare reform program.<br />
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Kaine ran for office touting the need for more money to build highways. He wasn't able to make that happen. He also, because of empty state coffers, wasn't able to institute the universal pre-K program he'd promised.<br />
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Big advantage there for Allen.<br />
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I wouldn't be surprised in 2012 if Allen talks about what he did as governor so much people will have to pinch themselves to remember that he's running for the Senate.<br />
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Kaine will have to focus on Allen's personality and Senate record. Kaine benefited in his own run for governor in 2005 by the perception that his Republican opponent Jerry Kilgore was running an over-the-top negative campaign. In 2012 Kaine, one of the genuine nice guys in Virginia politics, might have to get a little nasty himself. I'd be surprised if he's comfortable with that.<br />
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Allen's "A Team" won't have similar compunctions about playing political hardball. It's what they do and they're good at it -- you could ask Mary Sue Terry or Chuck Robb if you could find either one after Allen wiped them off Virginia's political map.<br />
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Both men have above average political skills and will likely have their respective parties fully behind them. <br />
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Kaine will have to run with his good friend President Barack Obama. Obama won Virginia in 2008 and could very well do so again. A recent poll had him losing the state to "generic Republican," but beating all of the specific announced or expected to announce Republican candidates.<br />
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Allen will have to run with whoever emerges as the nominee from what, at this point, doesn't look like a strong group of Republican presidential contenders.<br />
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It should be a tight battle, providing plenty of fodder for bloggers, talking heads and other forms of political junky.<br />
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Get your popcorn, Cracker Jacks and cold drinks ready.<br />
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Cross posted to <a href="http://blog.vivianpaige.com/">All Politics Is Local.</a>Virginia Pundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14120407478348260731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3108256726595048581.post-12424715867805183282011-03-21T11:02:00.000-07:002011-03-21T11:02:36.323-07:00Please split up my 'community of interest'It's redistricting time.<br />
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The General Assembly meets next month to draw the new lines for the state's 11 Congressional districts, 100 House of Delegates district and 40 State Senate districts.<br />
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This year we've had an appetizer, since the governor's commission on redistricting (which only has advisory status), college students participating in a redistricting contest, and the incumbent members of Congress have given us sneak peeks at maps they like.<br />
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To no one's surprise, the plan the congressmen came up with protects all 11 incumbents, which requires at least two egregious gerrymanders: the continuation of the snake-like 3rd District which winds its way down I-64 in search of African-American voters, and a new "Gerry-mander" in the 11th to give Rep. Gerry Connolly a more Democratic district than the one he almost lost last November.<br />
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The other maps are more interesting because they try to create compact, contiguous districts without regard for politics and try to keep "communities of interest" intact. (That's not something the congressmen care about, they created a 5th District that includes Danville and parts of Loudoun County).<br />
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That was one of the governor's charges to his commission. It also echoes the major concern I've always heard expressed by local government leaders, and by voters, in the previous rounds of redistricting. "I just hope they don't split up my city/county."<br />
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That concern is very important to people. But I've never understood why.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Perhaps they don't understand democracy. In a democracy the side with the most votes wins. So, why wouldn't you want to maximize your number of votes? <br />
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If I were a county administrator or a city manager, why wouldn't I want two congressmen looking after my locality's interests rather than one?<br />
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It's even more important in the General Assembly.<br />
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Because Virginia is a Dillon rule state, local governments often have to ask for permission from the General Assembly to do even routine things. That means putting a bill in. Often, if it's a bill that only affects that one community, it requires a supermajority to pass.<br />
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Why wouldn't you want to go into that process with as many votes in your pocket as possible?<br />
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It seems to me that those localities that are represented by the most legislators have the best record of getting what they want.<br />
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Let's take two examples: the state's most populous locality, Fairfax County, and the capital city, Richmond.<br />
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Fairfax is split up between <em>17 </em>(!) House of Delegates districts -- represented by 12 Democrats and 5 Republicans -- and nine Senate districts, all held by Democrats. <br />
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That's right, nearly a quarter of the Senate represents part of Fairfax County. I wouldn't be surprised if they got the extra seat to get them to 25% in this round of redistricting.<br />
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If Fairfax wants to pass a bill (assuming it's not special legislation) and can get its delegation to agree (and state legislators, for the most part, are at least as loyal to their home localities as they are to their parties), they only need to find 34 votes out of the 83 delegates who <em>don't </em>represent part of the county and 12 votes among the 31 out-of-Fairfax senators.<br />
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Consequently, Fairfax has a pretty good record of getting what it wants.<br />
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Richmond doesn't have the same size delegation, because it's much smaller, only 200,000 people as opposed to more than a million. But Richmond has six votes in the House -- four Democrats and two Republicans,<br />
and four in the Senate, split evenly between the parties.<br />
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That's just the city itself, adding in the surrounding counties of Chesterfield and Henrico adds another seven delegates and two senators, mostly Republican. So, if they all cooperate on an issue of regional concern -- not a given in the Richmond area -- they can exert a force similar to Fairfax.<br />
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That's why an attempt by Gov Bob McDonnell this year to punish VCU for increasing tuition had no shot. VCU is too important to economic development in Richmond, which is important to economic development in the region. And the region has a lot of votes in the General Assembly.<br />
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What if McDonnell had tried the same thing with the College of William & Mary? Williamsburg has one vote in the Senate and one in the House, both members of the minority caucus in their respective chambers. Assuming the legislators in surrounding counties stood solid with their Williamsburg colleagues, that's three votes in the House, one vote in the Senate. One of those votes is Sen. Tommy Norment (R-3rd), the Senate Minority Leader, who is as shrewd a horse trader as the General Assembly has seen since Dick Cranwell left. He might have been able to cut a deal with Senate Democrats to kill the proposal. But he'd have had to work at it.<br />
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It also helps to have friends on both sides of the aisle, as Richmond and -- to a lesser extent -- Fairfax do. <br />
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Seniority is a plus as well. Fairfax has the Senate Majority Leader and a number of committee chairmen. Richmond has the chair of the Senate Courts of Justice Committee and the House Majority Leader lives just down the road in Colonial Heights.<br />
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Aside from Norment, the Historic Triangle doesn't have much seniority. When former Del. Phil Hamilton (R-93rd), the vice chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and chairman of the House Health, Welfare & Institutions Committee had to resign his seat due to a conflict of interest scandal it severely impacted the area's clout.<br />
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So, if <em>I </em>lived in Williamsburg, I'd be hoping that the city's two precincts got split, both in the House and the Senate. But it's not likely to happen.<br />
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Cross posted to <a href="http://blog.vivianpaige.com/">All Politics Is Local</a>.Virginia Pundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14120407478348260731noreply@blogger.com0