Reinventing commissions to reinvent reinventing government

Now that he's got the General Assembly out of town and he can get down to business, Gov. Bob McDonnell has turned his sights on "reinventing government."

He's appointed a commission to suggest ways to do that.

As usual for such commissions, it's filled with eminent names from state and local politics and government, as well as business interests and lobbyists. McDonnell's commission is huge, 31 members, so it might have trouble reaching consensus by July 16, when its report is due.

If what the governor is trying to do is cut down on red tape and unnecessary government spending, he could  have just read the last five or six reports issued by commissions on reinventing governments. After all, none of their recommendations have been acted on yet.

In fact, since the current commission is really just a way to get to the governor's goal of selling off the state's liquor stores, he'd really only need to read one report, the Wilder Commission report from Gov. Mark Warner's administration,

That report suggested selling the ABC stores, both to simplify government and to pump $400 to 500 million into the state budget. The primary objection to this proposal was, and remains, that in order to realize that one-time cash infusion, the state would be giving up a steady stream of revenue -- more than $200 million per year -- from ABC profits.

In a scenario where the state just got out of the liquor business, allowing it to be taken over by private industry, while the state liquidated its inventory and warehousing operations and terminated its retail employees, the state would also lose control over liquor sales.

And that worries some people, including legislators.

Because the future they see is one with liquor stores proliferating on every corner or victimizing disadvantaged neighborhoods or marring other neighborhoods with tacky advertising. And that's a prospect that many -- including many of the conservative, religious Republicans who are part of McDonnell's base -- oppose. That plan probably can't pass the General Assembly, even the Republican-controlled House.

So the pure "free-market" approach won't work. It doesn't generate enough money for the commonwealth and it will be very unpopular. That means the McDonnell administration needs to think outside the box and get beyond the GOP's free-market dogma. It needs to adopt a scheme of "quasi-privatization."

Read more »

The Multiple Choice Section

Fate hinges on the choices we make.

 

This week different choices in the news are on my mind.

 

•  On the world stage, the European Union decided to put together a bail-out package for Greece, which is broke. The package takes the form of billions in cheap loans both from Greece's partners in the "euro zone" and from our own Federal Reserve. The goal is to stop the collapse of the Greek economy before it triggers similar collapses in Spain, Portugal and Italy. That could jeopardize the tentative recovery from the Great Recession and throw the world into a double-dip recession. That's a choice the rest of Europe didn't want to make, but apparently has to make, much like our bank bail-outs two years ago.

• President Barack Obama chose Solicitor General Elena Kagan as his next nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, to take the seat of retiring Justice John Paul Stevens. Kagan is generally seen as the safe choice. She's already been confirmed by the Senate for the Solicitor General's job and even garnered a handful of Republican votes. She's liberal, but not so liberal that the Republicans will try to filibuster her nomination. She's never been a judge before, so she doesn't have a history of opinions for opponents to sort through looking for an issue. As dean of Harvard Law School she did try to ban military recruiting at the school in protest of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy on gays serving. That's likely to be the biggest objection raised against her, but it was raised during her previous confirmation hearings to little effect. In fact, if the Republican blogosphere is any indication, the fact that Kagan has never served as a judge is itself going to be the major argument against her. It's a poor argument. More than half of the nation's previous Supreme Court justices had not served on the bench before being nominated for the high court. We just haven't done it that way in awhile. The last nominees who had not previously been judges were Richmond lawyer Lewis Powell and William Rehnquist, who had also served as Solicitor General, both nominated in 1971 by Richard Nixon. If Kagan is confirmed, it would be the first time three women have served simultaneously on the court. It might also mark the first time that the court was without a Protestant. Kagan is Jewish. She would join two other Jewish members and six Catholics on the court.

• Speaking of Jews and the Nixon Administration ......Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell is taking some heat over his choice of Fred Malek to head his commission on restructuring government. That's because one of Malek's previous experiences in restructuring government was an effort to reduce the number of Jews in the federal government at the request of President Nixon. Malek was responsible for putting together a list of the Jews in the Labor Department, which Nixon was convinced was riddled with "disloyal" Jewish employees. Turns out there were 13. Malek resigned as deputy chairman of the Republican National Committee when the story was first reported in 1988. Let's see, since taking charge five months ago, Virginia Republicans have offended gay and lesbian people with Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's unsolicited opinion that state colleges couldn't protect them from employment discrimination, African Americans with McDonnell's proclamation of April as Confederate History Month and now Jewish Virginians. Who's next?

Read more »

Keeping abreast of Attorney General Cuccinelli

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli continues to amuse.

The a.g. couldn't do a better job of keeping his name in the press if he were trying. Maybe he is. After all, he has gubernatorial ambitions in 2013. And I guess being repeatedly mocked by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show does raise his name recognition.

His latest comedy tour de force involves a John Ashcroft impersonation.

Former U.S. Attorney General Ashcroft raised eyebrows when he draped togas over the bare breasted statuary at the Department of Justice.

Cuccinelli's foray into the realm of priggish prudery came at the expense of the seal of Virginia. The seal, which is repeated on the state flag, portrays the goddess of virtue standing triumphant over a deposed  tyrant. One breast is exposed.

But not on the lapel pin recreation of the seal that Cuccinelli recently passed out to staff members of the attorney general's office. Virtue finds herself covered in a breast plate in that rendition.

The a.g. joked that her less risque apparel was more appropriate.

Perhaps Cuccinelli wanted to make sure that impressionable children weren't corrupted by the depiction of that topless hussy, Virtue. I can put his mind at ease. I spent my adolescent and teen years in Virginia and, like most teenage boys had a  more active fantasy sex life than real sex life. But I gaurantee that the state seal was never a factor.

As an example of being prissy and silly, the above would suffice. But Cuccinelli didn't stop there. Because he didn't invent his new version of the seal. He copied it. Where did he copy it from? The battle flag of the 28th Virginia Infantry, Army of the Confederacy. That's right, the Confedracy.

Can't you just see Gov. Bob McDonnell doing a slow Moe burn and giving Cuccinelli the Three Stooges eyepoke on that one?

Read more »

Punch your ticket in City Council race

The first thing that strikes me about the upcoming Williamsburg City Council election is that none of the five candidates is awful..

That's unusual.

In a mutli-candidate race like this, you'd usually have at least one candidate whom only his mother or a crackhead would vote for.

This year, however, one can see any of these candidates serving with distinction on council. Which isn't to say they are are all on the same page. Each brings different strenghs to the table. And since two seats are up for grabs, various combinations of candidates might play out very differently.

There are 10 possible "tickets" that could result from the May 4 election. Which voters choose depends on what they want council to look like for the next two years, at least.

  

 1. Nice Guys Finish First Ticket (Bobby Braxton and Dr. David Dafashy):  Incumbent Braxton and Dafashy, a physician with the student heatlh service at the College of William & Mary, are the most amiable of the five candidates. Each is quick with a joke or a smile. That doesn't mean they'd do a great job on council. As the stories of Mark Warner, Rahm Emaneul, Tommy Norment or George Allen point out, sometimes you need a highly-motivated jerk to get things done.

2. Status Quo Ticket (Braxton and Sean Driscoll): Braxton, of course, is on council. Driscoll, a member of the Planning Commission, has recycled some of retiring Mayor Jeanne Zeidler's rhetoric and of all the challengers is probably closest in philosophy to the current Council. So he'd fit right in with a Council run by likely new Mayor Clyde Haulman. If you think everything in the city is going just great, this is your ticket.

3. Age Ain't Nothing But a Number Ticket (Braxton and Scott Foster): Braxton is 50 years older than Foster, a 22-year-old graduating senior at W&M. Braxton  has a lifetime of experiences. Foster, who'll enter law school in the fall, basically has none. They don't agree on much. Foster supports student efforts to expand the three-person rule to four. Braxton wavered before voting against the expansion but has brought his negative vote up repeatedly during rhe campaign. I guess you could say they balance each other.

Read more »

Hey Buddy, Can You Spare 5 to 10 in the Federal Pen?

The next big battle in Washington in heating up.

And, as they have since January, Republicans are ready to "just say no." They should probably re-think that plan.

 Because this fight won't be over providing access to health insurance, which could be characterized as "helping poor people," although it actually benefits everyone. You can always drum up some opposition to helping the poor in America.

The coming battle will be over punishing the bankers, traders and Wall Street fat cats whose greed and dishonesty almost threw us into a second Great Depression. And, so far, the GOP has come down firmly on the side of the bad guys. In a letter to President Barack Obama, every Republican member of the House and Senate declined to support financial reform legislation backed by the president.

You'd think Republicans would have learned something from the first Great Depression, when Herbert Hoover sided with the folks who'd caused the crash and handed Washington over to the Democrats for a generation.

The Great Depression also created a long-standing distrust of Wall Street and the financial system among working class and middle class Americans.

My Dad, a Depression baby, used to tell me that the stock market was just a scam to fleece the little guy for the profit of the big guys.

Turns out he was right.

Read more »

Hey Bob, stop whistling Dixie.

C'mon Bob.

I'm really getting tired of explaining to my out-of-state friends that we aren't all neo-Confederate cesessionists who hate gay people and the unemployed.

You ran for office as "Bob for Jobs." Remember that? You haven't created any yet. In fact, the state budget you helped craft will cost thousands of teachers and other local government employees their jobs.

But, look, that's okay. It's a tough economy. Everybody understands that.

You've been trying to stick to your message.  You went on cable news shows and claimed that you'd filled a $4 billion hole in the state budget without raising taxes. That's a good message for you. Of course, it isn't quite true. There are taxes in the budget, although some of them are called "fees," and you filled a large part of the hole by borrowing from the Virginia Retirement System. That's money that will have to be paid back, with interest. The difference between that and the "deficit spending" your pals in the GOP are all over the President for seems largely a matter of semantics to me.

But the fixed-the-budget-without-raising taxes claim is close enough for politics. Particularly on televsion news.

So if that's why people were  talking about Virginia today, you'd be in clover. You'd have to start listening to all those people are who are lining up to tell you, "Yes, you can" in 2012's national elections.

But Bob, that's not why people are talking about Virginia.

They're talking abuot the damned Civil War again.

Read more »

Virginia: Bursting with Energy?

Gov. Bob McDonnell this week said he wanted to see Virginia become the "energy capital" of the East Coast.

The governor was commenting on a ruling by the Obama administration which might lead to drillling for oil and natural gas off Virginia's coast.

While Interior Secretary Ken Salazar somewhat downplayed the prospect, saying the administration had okayed a "look/see," Republicans, whose motto is "Drill, baby, drill," are already spending the money. In McDonnell's case, he wants to spend Virginia's future oil royalities on transportation.

Before the new governor of Texas-on-the-James gets fitted for a ten-gallon hat, there are a couple of problems with his plan.

First, under current law, Virginia can't collect any royalties for oil and natural gas extracted off its coast. Congess, dominated by non-coastal states, has been very relectant to allow East Coast states the same right to collect royalties that states on the Gulf Coast and Alaska have. Virginia's congressional delegation has introduced bills to change that, but there's no gaurantee that they will pass.

So, right now, an oil well off Virginia's coast won't benefit anyone except the oil company that drilled it.

Read more »