uvAggravator2.0

It’s plain enough why the governor’s privatization plan includes disappointing elements such as these:

·      1,000 retail licenses will be auctioned off to the highest bidders

·      The licenses will be broken into three categories: 600 licenses for large establishments such as grocery stores; 150 for smaller establishments such as package stores and wine and beer shops; 250 for convenience stores/retail pharmacies

·      No one company will be allowed more than 25% of licenses within each level

·      1,000 licenses will still give Virginia 1.8 outlets per 10,000 adults, far below the private state average of 3.8 per 10,000 adults

·      Majority of new license holders will be existing stores; Virginians will primarily see new shelves in retail establishments, not new establishments.

·      332 licenses will be guaranteed for areas currently served by an existing ABC outlet

·      The additional 668 licenses will be granted based on population density

They hardly add up to a laissez-faire approach, do they? Of course, McDonnell never promised a laissez-faire approach. He promised a privatized system, and even turning the ABC stores over to a private-sector monopoly technically would qualify under those terms. Still, it would have been nice to see a plan that imposed no such caps and conditions on the licenses, and didn’t fetishize the revenue angle.

FYI, the governor will have his say on the matter in a guest column on tomorrow’s Op/Ed Page.

 

Gov. Bob McDonnell's staff unveiled a proposal Wednesday to nearly triple the number of establishments that sell liquor in the state -- to 1,000 -- though the majority of new licenses would go to establishments where Virginians can already buy beer and wine, such as grocery and convenience stores. McDonnell's staff, now briefing members of his government reform commission, argue that their plan raises money for state roads, almost fully replaces revenue Virginia now receives from its ABC stores, expands the shelf space devoted to distilled spirits in the state while avoiding a proliferation of new liquor stores, and does not raise taxes. That last point will be key for a Republican who ran for governor on a platform of improving roads without new taxes. McDonnell will have to persuade legislators that new fees on parts of the industry involved with his complex proposal do not represent tax increases. That


Virginia - Bob McDonnell - Distilled beverage - Alcoholic beverage control state - Government

Is there a Koch connection to Gov. Robert F. McDonnell's 31-member commission on government streamlining?
The Kochs are brothers David H. and Charles who run Wichita-based Koch Industries, a petroleum-based conglomerate that is the second-largest privately held company in the United States. They are hard-right political activists with a libertarian, anti-Obama bent, who, according to a recent New Yorker profile, "believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry -- especially environmental regulation."
Among the Kochs' many donations are millions of dollars for the Arlington-based Mercatus Center, a "market-oriented" think tank tied to George Mason University. One Democratic strategist has described Mercatus as "ground zero for deregulation policy in Washington."
Maurice McTigue, a former New Zealand politician and a vice president at Mercatus is on McDonnell's commission. McTigue, who was known as a government streamliner in New Zealand, has advised states such as Louisiana on cutting state functions.
A spokeswoman for Mercatus says that, except for McTigue, there is no direct tie between the McDonnell commission and the think tank. A source close to the commission reports that McTigue sits in on meetings of subcommittees other than his own. Also, correspondence from a McDonnell staffer that was supplied to me by a source suggests that Mercatus is playing a bigger role by helping the commission "flesh out potential recommendations and ideas."
The governor's goal is to cut back on state spending, privatize as many entities as seem appropriate, end redundancies and make state government more transparent. These may seem like worthy goals to some. But one wonders if it really means having the state throttle the poor and sick and let companies have their way with the state's rivers, lakes and air, along with the Chesapeake Bay. Will consumers be protected from predatory firms? Or would that be off-limits for state regulators?
Other questions have been raised about the makeup of McDonnell's commission. It is being chaired by Fred Malek, a former Army Green Beret and Nixon administration staffer who was involved in President Richard Nixon's efforts to identify Jews at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Malek has said he did so reluctantly and later apologized.
Besides Malek, the rest of the McDonnell commission is very lopsided -- to the right. Among its members:

• Alexandra Liddy Bourne, executive director of American Energy Freedom Center, a Northern Virginia outfit that also employs former Republican Gov. George Allen. The conservative energy lobby pushes for oil drilling off of Virginia's coast and runs through the usual laundry list of opposition to global warming legislation.
• Commission member Geoff Segal is a vice president of Macquarie Capital, an Australian firm that is very big into privatized road projects -- another McDonnell favorite.
• "Special advisor" is Mike Thompson, chairman and president of the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy, a right-wing, libertarian outfit that unfortunately took over the old Bacon's Rebellion e-zine and turned it into an e-rag for Northern Virginia-based lobbyists pushing privatization and limited government.It isn't exactly the place to turn to to see a wide spectrum of opinion.

The Kochs however, are much bigger fish and, according to the New Yorker, they have pumped millions to stymie Barack Obama whom they consider a socialist. The conservative movement has had more than its share of Southwestern or Midwestern oil billionaires, such as the Hunt brothers of Texas, who have the deep pockets for their favorite political charities. These are the kinds of people who attacked John F. Kennedy because he was a Catholic and backed Curtis Lemay, the neo-fascist retired Air Force general, for office. The New Yorker says the Kochs are covertly funding the Tea Party movement, which is a curiosity given the Tea Party's supposed populism.
But money, especially oil money, talks.
Peter Galuszka

Former Gov. Doug Wilder (D), a strong proponent of privatizing state-run liquor stores, is predicting a tough -- though not insurmountable -- road for Gov. Bob McDonnell's proposal to end Virginia's spirits monopoly. "He's in a difficult situation," Wilder said. "Can it be done? Yes. Will it be done tomorrow? No." Wilder, who chaired a government reform commission that recommended ABC privatization and periodically discusses the idea with McDonnell, said he senses organized opposition to the concept and but little organized support. "I have not identified nor seen the supporters -- the people who would be called upon to pass this thing," Wilder said. "But there's organization for the opposition. It's pretty apparent, and you don't have to go far for it."


Virginia - Privatization - Bob McDonnell - Government - Distilled beverage

The Huffington Post asks. . .

While at the very same moment, TPM reports. . .

This essay settles, once and for all, the question as to whether God exists.

Okay, not really. But it’s still worth the three minutes it will take you to read it.

The bitter fight between Rep. Tom Perriello (D) and state Sen. Robert Hurt (R) in Virginia's 5th congressional district took a personal turn on Twitter Tuesday, when Perriello's campaign called Hurt's spokeswoman a "carpetbagger" and a national GOP operative responded by tweeting the home addresses of several Perriello staffers. The spat comes as the race between Perriello and Hurt has grown increasingly negative, and attracted national attention to the question of whether Democrats might decide to withhold financial support for Perriello's bid in favor of other, more winnable races. Using his hefty campaign war chest, Perriello went on the air in recent days with a tough new ad calling Hurt "lobbyists' best friend." On Tuesday, Hurt spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg wrote on her Twitter feed: "Important to note that it was the Incumbent in this race @tomperriello that first went up with a negative ad #desperate." The Perriello campaign begged to


Virginia - Tom Perriello - Robert Hurt - Democratic Party - United States

Gov. Bob McDonnell's proposal to privatize the state's liquor system had been expected to face its first vote Wednesday afternoon, but the vote was postponed late Tuesday. A committee of McDonnell's government reform commission will meet at 1 p.m. to receive the proposal, but chairman Del. G. Glenn Oder (R-Newport News) delayed the vote because members did not receive details about the plan far enough in advance of the meeting. Oder did not return a call seeking comment. "It's a very sensible thing,'' said Sen. Mary Margaret Whipple (D-Arlington), a member of the committee who had said last week it would be "virtually impossible" to vote for the proposal if she did not receive details before the meeting. Richmond lawyer Howard Estes, who also serves on the committee, said he would have been surprised if the panel had been forced to vote on the proposal. He said the committee typically


Bob McDonnell - Mary Margaret Whipple - Privatization - Government - Gov. Bob McDonnell

More bad news for the guv:

“Before we heard any details, the idea of privatization was appealing,” said Randy Norton, chairman of Great American Restaurants, about to open its 11th eatery in Northern Virginia. “Our minds only went to what good could come out of it. . . . But if our taxes are going to be raised at all, we’re going to fight this thing very hard.”

By trying to buy off a tax-happy legislature, McDonnell seems to have put his plan in the middle of the road. . . . where it can get creamed from both sides.

Virginia will no longer allow federal employment authorization cards to be used to obtain driver's licenses or identification cards after a fatal crash involving Benedictine nuns and a drunk Bolivian national facing deportation stoked concerns over the document's reliability in determining someone's immigration status. The Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles changed its policy Tuesday to disallow the federal government's I-766 employment authorization card from being used as a primary document to determine "proof of legal presence" in the United States. Melanie Stokes, a spokeswoman for the agency, called the Aug. 1 death of Sister Denise Mosier, 66, the "catalyst" for the law change. A drunken driver, Carlos A. Martinelly-Montano, 23, swerved into the path of a vehicle carrying Mosier and two other nuns on their way to a retreat in Prince William County. Martinelly-Montano, who had entered the United States illegally at age 8 with his parents and sister, had


United States - Virginia - Prince William County Virginia - Law - Carlos Martinelly-Montano

Today’s column is about the OED going online-only.

As we reported over the weekend, Virginia probably should not expect expect either a financial windfall or a level of income that matches what state-run liquor stores currently add to Richmond's bottom line, according to a Washington Post analysis of other states that have privatized at least part of their alcohol sales. Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) said he expects to make $500 million upfront while retaining nearly $250 million in taxes and profits to the state each year by doing what no control state has done -- privatizing the wholesale, distribution and retail. He will announce his proposal Wednesday. Iowa and West Virginia, the only two states that have fully privatized their retail stores in the last two decades, each made less than $20 million upfront when they privatized. Officials there say the change helped them become more efficient and saved overhead costs, but never produced the anticipated windfall. In


West Virginia - Washington Post - United States - Privatization - Alcoholic beverage

Profits and tax revenues at state-run liquor stores grew by 4.4 percent in fiscal year 2010 over fiscal year 2009, and total $258.6 million, according to a spokesman for the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) has promised his plan for privatizing state-run liquor stores, scheduled to be unveiled Wednesday, will fully replace the annual revenue Virginia now receives from the sale of hard liquor. But just how much does Virginia get from its ABC stores? As discussions have unfolded on the topic over the summer, the most cited numbers have been from fiscal year 2009, which ended June 30, 2009 and have been the most current numbers available. In 2009, Virginia received $109.6 million in excise taxes on liquor, $26.2 million in sales taxes and $111.8 million in profits from ABC stores, for a total of $247.6 million. But fiscal year 2010 ended June 30


Virginia - Bob McDonnell - Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control - Alcoholic beverage control state - Alcoholic beverage

A while back I wrote about the usefulness of online games in providing music loops that drown out background noise without invading your thoughts.

Here’s another good one.

Updated 1:15 p.m. Democrats released a new poll Tuesday that showed U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello (D-Va.) in a dead heat with state Sen. Robert Hurt (R) as Perriello and his party seek to combat the perception that his reelection might be slipping out of reach. With the media focused on whether the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has decided to cut off financial support from Perriello and some other endangered lawmakers, the DCCC released a survey Tuesday by Global Strategy Group showing Hurt leading Perriello in the 5th district, 44 percent to 42 percent, well within the poll's 4.9 percent margin of error. Independent candidate Jeffrey Clark drew 6 percent. "These results confirm what every reputable pollster has shown -- this race is neck and neck," said DCCC spokesman Jesse Ferguson. Surveys of the race have been all over the map, but the new one is definitely the closest. Two different


Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee - Tom Perriello - Robert Hurt - Democratic - Global Strategy Group

Following this brilliant strategy, I hereby call on voters in the Fifth District to vote against Tom Periello. . . . Come Nov., you’ll see just how powerful I am. . . .

The Economist says cheaper lighting could mean more lighting, not lower bills.

That’s how Democratic strategists plan to leave Tom Periello.

7 September 2010

Editor, The New York Times
620 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10018

To the Editor:

EPA Assistant Administrator Gina McCarthy explains that her agency is designing a new and improved fuel-economy label for (mandated) placement on all new cars sold in the U.S. (Letters, Sept. 7).

Taking Ms. McCarthy’s advice, I visited the EPA’s website and examined each of the proposed new labels.  I was disappointed to find that a vital piece of information related to fuel economy is missing from both labels - namely, the increased risk of traffic fatalities that result from higher fuel “economy.”  To raise fuel economy, automakers often reduce the weight of their cars, which typically means making cars’ bodies and structural supports out of lighter-weight, weaker metal.  So a car that is more “fuel efficient” will likely also be one that is less “health efficient.”

Because Ms. McCarthy is right that it is “imperative that consumers have more information,” I propose that the new label also explains the magnitude of the increased health risks suffered by automobile occupants as a consequence of government-mandated fuel-efficiency standards.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030

Peter posted a very good Labor Day statement concerning The Wealth Gap and here is another transect through that same frightening territory.

The current administration is proposing a $100 Billion tax break for Enterprise R&D.

There are four BIG problems here:

First: The obvious one that Jim Bacon will focus on: It drives the federal deficit even higher. Boomergeddon sooner!

Second: It puts more big and mid-sized firms on the dole and generates more political contributions for the existing political Clans.

Third: It will not provide jobs that the folks who Accurate correctly points out are not contributing their fair share of effort and are the ones who NEED jobs.

Fourth: R&D, if it is ‘successful,’ will drive Mass OverConsumption, not REAL conservatism – aka, conservation.

The Enterprises that are large enough to qualify to have an R&D program and have cash flow large enough that make tax breaks attractive are NOT the Enterprises needed to get Main Street to work. Picking up on TMT’s point, getting the tax break will justify even higher CEO compensation.

The US does not need Garmeen Foundation-scale micro loans but it does need Community Supported Enterprise loans. Bacon has done a nice job of pointing out that banks are using the past rounds of 'incentives' to improve their bottom line, not make loans.

Get citizens involved. Investments should be in activities and Enterprises that investors can see and understand, not in Gambling Venues.

There are a plethora of ideas that we have uncovered while preparing a series of talks on the application of Regional Metrics to Community prosperity. One is that the CSA idea is spreading from Agriculture to Enterprises. But that news is drowned in the Labor Day ads about discounts on goods made in China.

Time is short and getting out useful information is critical. The Administration is also proposing $50 Billion in new ‘infrastructure’ programs. There is a better way to spend some of that money:

Take the infrastructure money that would otherwise go to subsidize dysfunctional human settlement patterns – most of it outside the logical locations of The Clear Edges – and provide it to qualifying Community Colleges for education and information on Community support ideas and programs like CSE.

What is needed are investments in start-up Neighborhood, Village and Community scale Enterprises.

Want to support a sustainable economy in your Community, your SubRegion, your Region and by extension in the US?

Stop reading INC., The Wall Street Journal and The Earth is Flat. Start reading YES, and The Small Mart Revolution.

Start a study circle in your Cluster around Cheap, The High Cost of Discount Culture and The Story of Stuff. Read The Great Reset but focus on how to make Florida’s view of change benefit, not pillage, your Village and your Community.

Small is beautiful.

Happy Labor Day.

EMR

In "Matewan," the 1987 film about organizing West Virginia coal miners, union activist Joe Keenehan, played by Chris Cooper, tells a group of dubious miners: "There's two types of people. Them that work and them that don't. You work. They don't."
With that as a Labor Day message, let's consider some very important structural changes in our economy and on that some economists believe is a major reason why we're not seeing very much of a recovery from recession.
Wage inequality is a rising phenomenon that has not been dealt with, according to Robert B. Reich, former Secretary of Labor. Despite the entry of women into the labor force in a big way and two wage earners per family in many cases, the purchasing power of average wage-earners has been decreasing over the past several decades. One result is that the middle class no longer has as much dollar clout to buy enough goods to facilitate more production and more jobs. Hence, our unemployment rate hovers at about 9 percent or so without much change.
How come? One reason is that many of the economic gains over the past several decades have gone to the richest people. Reich writes:
"In the late 1970s, 1 percent of American families took in about 9 percent of the nation's income; by 2007, the top 1 percent took in 23.5 percent of total income."
Okay. So, the rich are getting a lot richer. But if we believe in trickle down economics a la Arthur Laffer and Ronald Reagan, this is a good thing since everyone will share in the benefit, lower taxes on the rich will generate more wealth and we'll be very happy.
Well, not exactly, as Reich notes, the new rich do not spend all that much of what they have. And these days, if they do invest, their money is just as likely to go to the Cayman Island, China, the Isle of Man, Cyprus or anywhere but the U.S.
The data about the income flows at the top comes from Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, two Berkeley professors, who have studied income tax returns since the taxes were first levied. Income patterns were fairly similar among the rich of various countries until the 1970s. After that they remained stable in Europe and Japan, but "increased enormously in the United States and other English-speaking countries."
The chief reason, they say, is that the pay for top corporate managers suddenly rose exponentially. In fact, According to BusinessWeek (my alma mater), in 1980, the average CEO of a major firm made 42 times the average worker's pay. That rose to 85 times by 1990. By 2000, it had reached an incredible 531 times that of the average hourly worker.
Reasons given for this anomaly, according to Saez and Picketty, are that being top boss is a lot harder, but they note it doesn't explain why CEO pay did not rise by the same rate in countries such as Japan where one might assume running Toyota or Sony is not much easier. A second reason could be that labor unions have been beaten down so much that they no longer can act as a reasonable brake on CEO greed. A third reason could be that CEOs have been allowed to set their own pay terms and "extract rents at the expense of shareholders."
The same pattern can be seen on university campuses where being president has gradually become enormously lucrative. John Casteen, the former president of the University of Virginia made $797,048 in 2008 while the median pay for a public university was $427,400. Eugene Trani, former head of Virginia Commonwealth University made $532,000, but that doesn't include perks such as directorships of corporations. He made $159,000 this year as a director of tobacco firm Universal Corporation.
This kind of largess has made London's Economist magazine question if America's colleges are going the way of car companies. Against a backdrop of such big salaries for top administrators, college fees have soared beyond the ability of many Americans to pay for them. Between 1993 and 2007, administrative costs at Harvard have gone up 300 percent. Does this mean schools are hiring superstar professors? Not really. They tend to spend more on the president's office or on luxurious dorms or fancy sports stadiums than on actual teaching.
The libertarians who dominate this blog stick their heads in the sand and choose not to see these harmful trends. Instead, they want more tax cuts for the rich or they want to keep George W. Bush's tax cuts, which, in a big contradiction, have led to the budget deficits they have recently discovered and despise. If you raise any of these issues, they scream, "income redistribution!" as if it were the Bolshevik Revolution.
But if you've ever visited the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg you might realize that the Bolshies had a point.
Peter Galuszka

Kerry Dougherty makes some excellent points in her blog, again.

My latest column from the Washington Times:

The big three credit-rating agencies that totally missed the meltdown of the subprime mortgage market - Moody's, Standard & Poor's and Fitch - still give the United States a AAA credit rating. But there's a newcomer in the credit-rating game - Dagong Global Credit Rating - which has a very different view of the strength of U.S. finances.
Beijing-headquartered Dagong, the dominant credit agency in China, is pushing into international markets. This summer, it rated the sovereign debt of 50 nations making up 90 percent of the world's economy. While Americans still tend to regard U.S. Treasuries as the "safest investment in the world," Dagong gave our debt a mere AA - lower than that of 11 other countries (including China, which it awarded an AA+). To add insult to injury, the firm declared the U.S. outlook to be "negative."
Dagong has set off something of a hissy fit in the credit-rating world. "The Western rating agencies are politicized and highly ideological, and they do not adhere to objective standards," Chairman Guan Jianzhong told the Financial Times in July. The company also accused U.S. agencies, which share an oligopoly enforced by government fiat, of contributing to the 2007-08 financial crisis by applying the coveted AAA rating to loads of junk subprime mortgage debt.
The chairman of McGraw-Hill, owner of Standard and Poor's, accused Dagong of pandering to popular prejudice, insisting that S&P and the other agencies have been unfairly targeted by politicians, pundits and competitors. Also, he countered that Dagong lacks transparency in its policies and procedures.
We can debate forever whether the U.S. agencies employ more analytical rigor in the rating of their sovereign debt than Dagong, but let's be clear about one thing: Dagong is not a chump outfit. The company boasts of more than 500 employees, including more than 200 analysts with master's degrees or doctorates and 50 with postdoctorates. The Chinese finance ministry has directed the company to "participate in the construction of [the] Asian bond market." Read more.
Bacon bottom line: Major global investors upon whom the United States depends to continue buying our Treasuries have a far less sanguine idea of our fiscal health than we ourselves do. I'm not saying that Dagong is correct and the U.S. rating agencies are wrong, only that the U.S. agencies do not reflect global opinion. I would be interested to know how Dagong might evaluate Virginia's AAA debt, if it were allowed to participate in the U.S. debt-rating market. I wonder how they might view a state economy so overwhelmingly dependent upon federal government expenditures.

Note to pre-Boomers:For those who you who miss the allusion to 1970s-era "The Gong Show" edify yourself by clicking here.

The Department of Motor Vehicles is sending letters requesting 4,240 driver's license and ID card applicants get their photos taken again after an Aug.25 computer outage left their original photos unrecoverable. "Unfortunately, all photographs taken that day for credentials could not be recovered, therefore no credentials were mailed to these customers,'' the DMV said in a press release. Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) warned Thursday that some data may have been lost due to the outage that left 26 state agencies, including the DMV, scrambling to serve Virginians. The Virginia Information Technologies Agency returned the data to DMV after the outage, but advised that the database did not include 12,000 to 16,000 photos, including those taken Aug. 25. DMV staff is evaluating the database to determine if other photos are not recoverable. The DMV is open this weekend, including Labor Day, and next weekend to process applicants.


Department of Motor Vehicles - Virginia - Bob McDonnell - Driver's license - Identity document

Prince William County Police Chief Charlie T. Deane has sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security questioning a policy that allows illegal immigrants waiting for deportation proceedings to get a permit to work. The Aug. 30 letter sent to John T. Morton, assistant secretary of homeland security, was sparked by a recent drunk-driving accident in which a Bolivian man, Carlos A Martinelly-Montano, crashed into another vehicle, killing one nun and injuring two others. Martinelly-Montano, who entered the United States illegally when he was 8, was awaiting a deportation hearing after two convictions for drunken driving. Deane said Martinelly-Mantano was granted an Employment Authorization Card on Jan. 14, 2009, just months after being placed in deportation proceedings. In the letter, Deane said he has concerns with a policy that allows an EAC to be issued to someone waiting to be deported. "I ask that this glaring gap in DHS


United States - Prince William County Virginia - Illegal immigration - United States Department of Homeland Security - Driving under the influence

Rep. Rick Boucher (D) leads state House Majority Leader Morgan Griffith (R) by 10 points with two months remaining until Election Day, according to a new independent poll of the 9th district. The SurveyUSA poll, conducted for WDBJ-TV in Roanoke, shows Boucher ahead among likely voters, 50 percent to 40 percent. Independent candidate Jeremiah Heaton drew 5 percent. That result is a slight improvement for Griffith over a mid-July poll by the same firm, which showed the Republican trailing by 13 points in the Southwest Virginia district. "The contest remains tied among men; among women, Boucher leads by 22 points, essentially unchanged. 1 in 4 Republicans continue to cross over to vote for the Democrat. Independents remain divided," SurveyUSA wrote in a memo on the new survey. (Notably, the same polling firm and television station have been teaming up to do polls of Rep. Tom Perriello's (D) reelection race in


Tom Perriello - Democratic - Republican - SurveyUSA - Southwest Virginia

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) will speak at a conference organized by former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed next week in the District. Hundreds of activists are expected to attend the Faith and Freedom Coalition's first national conference and strategy briefing Sept. 9-11 at the Mayflower Renaissance Hotel. They will learn about voter registration, get-out-the-vote efforts and how to use social media to build a volunteer network in advance of the November elections. Scheduled panel participants include "Mama Grizzly" candidates who are making 2010 the "Year of the Conservative Woman" and leading Tea Party organizers. "This is not just a conference or a retreat," Reed said in a news release. "This is the political equivalent of NFL minicamp. We will train and equip our activists on how to block and tackle in the churches and precincts as we prepare for the most important election of our lifetimes." Other confirmed speakers


Activism - Ralph Reed - Ralph E. Reed Jr. - Virginia - Bob McDonnell

Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) has told lawmakers they should prepare for a special legislative session on government reform in November, according to Sen. Janet Howell (D-Fairfax). Howell said McDonnell told legislative leaders in a conference call about two weeks ago that he would be calling them to Richmond to consider plans for making government more efficient, including privatizing state run liquor stores, sometime between the Nov. 2 Election and Thanksgiving, which is Nov. 25. That timing would give legislators several weeks to consider proposals after their formal recommendation by McDonnell's reform commission, a vote that is scheduled to take place Oct. 4. But it also would also push the special session fairly close to the Jan. 12, start of the General Assembly's regular annual session. Democrats may argue the Commonwealth should save money and skip a special session, taking up McDonnell's proposals during the regular session instead. That would give


Bob McDonnell - Government - Legislature - Special session - Legislative session

Here's some important news from the Pew Hispanic Center.
The center reports that the number of immigrants entering the United States illegally fell by nearly two-thirds between 2005 to 2009. In the first part of the past decade, the number of undocumented people coming into the country was about 850,000 a year. With recession and harsh laws targeting immigrants, it fell to 300,000 a year between 2007 and 2009. The number of undocumented immigrants estimated to be in the country fell by 1 million to about 11 million, the report says.
Among states, the biggest declines were in Virginia, Florida and Nevada. In Virginia, the number fell by 60,000 from 2008 to 2009, to an estimated 240,000.
So, one has to ask: If the number of undocumented workers is falling because of the recession, the crash in housing construction and oppressive laws such as the one Prince William County adopted in 2007, why is there suddenly such a big need for a statewide push against immigrants here illegally?
Corey A. Stewart, the Prince William Board of County Supervisors chairman who backed his county's legislation and is leading the charge for a statewide law, has said he is "proud" of the statistics.
But once again, if the number of undocumented foreigners arriving is dropping, why does Virginia suddenly need to be the next Arizona? Stewart says that if you let up on the pressure, they'll just come back. This plays well at Glenn Beck rallies.
It's hard to fathom this hatred of the foreign-born. It smacks of the "Know-Nothing" movement of the 1840s and 1850s, in which Anglo-Saxon Protestants tried to curb immigration of Catholic Germans and Irish. The newcomers, they said, were unwashed, did not hold American values and committed crimes. Plus, they were controlled by the pope in Rome.
At one point, the Know-Nothings commanded considerable clout and got the upper hand in elections in northern cities, such as Boston and Salem, Mass., that immigrants favored, and they sometimes resorted to violence. Eventually, they ran out of steam.
You can see the effects of Prince William's law. I happened to be in Manassas recently and stopped by Mi Barrio, a Salvadoran-Mexican eatery on Prescott Avenue that caters to Latinos. The owner, Luis Gomez, told me that after the law took effect in 2007, he had to shut down for six months. His customers were afraid to come to the county.
The law, which authorizes county police to stop anyone they suspect of being an illegal immigrant, resulted in the rousting of dark-skinned people in cars, Gomez said. "If they saw three Spanish-looking people in a car, they'd look for a reason to stop them and then check their IDs," he said. Eventually, the cops let up, and Gomez returned to his normal operating times.
It is distressing to think that a county or a state would enact laws designed by their very nature to profile by race and color. Even more absurd is the fact that they are being proposed while the supposed need for a statewide law is going away.
But who knows, maybe the modern-day nativist movement will go the way of the Know-Nothings.
Peter Galuszka

Today’s column points out that, unlike the Virginia Information Technologies Agencies, newspapers never make mista

Wapo’s Eugene Robinson says the anti-Democratic mood

isn’t an “electoral wave,” it’s a temper tantrum.

Seems like every time there’s a huge GOP tidal wave, pundits call voters crybabies.

Because the voters, not having gotten their way, supposedly are lashing out.

The pundits themselves would never do that, of course. . . .

When it comes to roads. According to this report. . . .

Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) said Thursday that it's possible some data may be lost due to a statewide computer outage this week that left 26 state agencies, including the Department of Motor Vehicles, scrambling to serve Virginians. McDonnell said he told Northrop Grumman CEO Wes Bush Wednesday that he wanted his company -- who holds a $2.4-billion contract with the state -- to restore as much data as possible. "I want the very best and brightest minds in Northrop Grumman to evaluate any decision,'' McDonnell told reporters this afternoon. "I have told the president of Northrop Grumman and the Virginia Information Technology Agency that I don't want any stone left unturned to find this data and rebuild so that we don't have to inconvenience any more people." The problem began Aug. 25 with the crash of a pair of three-year-old memory cards -- one was supposed to back up another.


Northrop Grumman - Bob McDonnell - Virginia - Department of Motor Vehicles - Information technology

Yesterday, a depressing series of photos lined the second-floor room at the University Club in downtown Washington. They were of the effects of Soviet nuclear weapons testing at Semipalatinsk, a vast and lonely area on the steppes of Kazakhstan.
I was invited to the event sponsored by Global Green USA and the Embassy of Kazakhstan as throwback to my years covering Central Asia. This may be far afield for usual Bacon Rebellion columns, but it may be worth it.
The event commemorates two anniversaries. The first, remembering Aug. 29, 1949, was the event code-named "First Lighting." There, at Semipalatinsk, the Soviets set off their first nuclear bomb. On that windy and cold morning, the sky turned red, the ground trembled and the mushroom cloud appeared.
Americans were shocked in their arrogance that it would take the backward Russians at least a decade before matching the Trinity test of 1945. A combination of first class espionage and world class science brought the Soviets to the bomb a lot sooner.
The second anniversary also occurred about the same time of year but about 20 years ago. Nursultan Nazerbayev, the Communist chief of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the president of the newly-independent country after the USSR collapsed, declared Semipalatinsk closed forever to nuclear testing.
During the years in between, some 456 nuclear blasts were set off, including 86 air bursts and 30 ones on the surface. With their penchant for secrecy, the Soviets built a secret research lab about 45 miles away from ground zero. Called Semipalatinsk 21, it was surrounded by barbed wire and access was strictly controlled.
The same secrecy prevailed as vast areas were contaminated with radioactive fallout. As the photos at the exhibit at the University Club showed, ordinary Kazakhs were afflicted with blood and heart disease, skin cancers, cleft jaws, birth defects, backward limbs and other ailments. Up to 1.5 million people were either sickened or killed. The land was scared as well. The ground bursts of the 1950s and early 1960s until the 1963 nuclear test ban left gigantic lakes filled with rainwater that are still radioactive.
The point of the exhibit is non-proliferation and to their credit the Kazakhs showed unusual sanity. When the Soviet Union fell apart without warning, they found themselves the proud owners of more nuclear warheads and delivery systems than the U.S., France and China combined. The threat of illegal sale or theft involving terrorists was obvious. Nazerbayev and his officials worked closely with the U.S. in securing and disposing of the weaponry.
One operation, set up under an anti-weapon program by Sens. Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar, involved CIA-sponsored covert flights of gigantic C-5A Air Force cargo planes flying out dozens of warheads. They ended up in the U.S. where they were disassembled and their enriched fissionable was removed and sent for reprocessing into fuel for commercial nuclear plants.
The issue now, Paul F. Walker of Global Green USA and Erlan Idrissov, the Kazakh Ambassador to the U.S. said, is to continue the process by getting the U.S. Senate to pass a new U.S.-Russian nuclear arms treaty that continues the weapons reduction process. Each country would be allowed 1,500 deployed warheads, about a 30 percent cut lower than what was allowed by treaty in 2002.
What is interesting about the Kazakh approach is that they willingly got rid of their nukes, unlike Pakistan, India, Israel, the U.K., France, China, Russia, the U.S. and perhaps South Africa. North Korea has exploded some kind of device and Iran may be on the verge of one as well.
The exhibit was the polar opposite of what every Hollywood action movie has shown since the fall of the USSR -- cheesy former Soviet republics selling off a few megatons for the price of a few BMWs. But then, Hollywood's "Borat" version of Kazakhstan was so off the mark, it isn't even worth bringing up.
Peter Galuszka

Virginia computer contractor Northrop Grumman has agreed to foot the bill for an independent investigation into the cause of storage unit failure that caused computing havoc at 26 of the state's 89 agencies over the last week, Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) announced Thursday afternoon. In a statement, McDonnell said that an outside vendor will be chosen jointly by his administration and the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee to conduct the review, but will be paid for by Northrop Grumman, who holds a $2.4 billion contract to manage the state's computer network.


Northrop Grumman - Virginia - Bob McDonnell - Military - Aviation

A representative of Virginia's computer contractor Northrop Grumman says the defense giant "deeply regrets" inconvenience caused by a widespread outage in the state's computer network over the past week. In a statement, Linda A. Mills, the company's corporate vice president and president of Northrop's Information Systems, said repairs to the data storage unit that failed Aug. 25 are complete and all state agencies are operational. Twenty-six of the state's 89 agencies experienced some level of outage. Most notably, operations at the state's 74 Department of Motor Vehicle locations were largely off-line for seven days. "Northrop Grumman deeply regrets the disruption and inconvenience this has caused state agencies and Virginia citizens," Mills said in a statement. "Over the last week, we have deployed significant resources and our staff has worked tirelessly in unison with [the Virginia Information Technologies Agency] and our partners to thoroughly verify and restore access to data and


Northrop Grumman - Virginia - Virginia Information Technologies Agency - Data - Motor vehicle

A new poll in Virginia's 5th district suggests state Sen. Robert Hurt (R) has a commanding lead over Rep. Tom Perriello (D) in the latter's reelection race, but Democrats are certain to dispute the survey's results. Conducted by the firm SurveyUSA for WDBJ News in Roanoke, the polls finds Hurt leading Perriello among likely voters, 61 percent to 35 percent, with independent candidate Jeffrey Clark drawing 2 percent. The results are similar to those from a July poll taken by the same firm for the same station, which showed Hurt ahead by 23 points. But those numbers are very different from the ones produced by another recent poll -- taken in August by Ayres McHenry & Associates for the pro-Republican group American Action Forum -- that showed Perriello trailing by just 6 points. And Perriello's camp was extremely critical of the last SurveyUSA poll, calling it "useless" arguing that the


Virginia - Tom Perriello - Robert Hurt - Democratic - Republicans

Sen. Mary Margaret Whipple (D-Fairfax) said this week it will be "virtually impossible" to vote for Gov. Bob McDonnell's proposal to privatize the state's liquor system Wednesday if she does not receive details before the meeting. Whipple is one of nine members of the Government Simplification & Operations Committee of McDonnell's government reform commission, which is scheduled to meet and vote Wednesday after a presentation on the ABC proposal. But so far, Whipple said she has received very little information from the governor's staff despite repeated requests for more information. Her last meeting with Eric Finkbeiner, McDonnell's senior adviser for policy, took place last week. She received no specific figures and nothing in writing. Whipple said she is trying to keep an open mind, but she said she remains concerned about the increase in stores and if the state will be able to keep receiving nearly $250 million a year


Bob McDonnell - Government - Mary Margaret Whipple - United States - Virginia