Occam’s Razor

Trapped in exurbia

As a part time prognosticator, I sometimes get it wrong. Sometimes I get it right. When I get it right, it is not necessarily a reason for feeling smug. Today, I reread this post that I wrote back in 2005. I wrote it when the oil squeeze was just beginning. I remarked how uncomfortable I felt seeing new exurbias sprouting up in nearby Loudoun County, Virginia because virtually all of them are inaccessible to public transportation. I wondered what would happen to these communities with continued increases in price of oil or its unavailability.

Now we are finding out, and the answer is scary, as this NPR story reports. Ashburn, Virginia is in Loudon County, Virginia and part of the greater Washington D.C. metropolitan area. It is one of those newly built exurbias. What is happening in Ashburn is that home prices are tumbling much faster than the national average.

Realtor Danilo Bogdanovic surveyed two rows of neat, new, brick townhouses on Falkner’s Lane. “These were selling for about $550,000 at the peak, which was about August ‘05, and they’re selling right now for about $350,000,” Bogdanovic said. “Fifty percent of this community has been ether foreclosed on or is facing foreclosure.”

Coincidentally, my hair stylist lives in Ashburn. Today while she was cutting my hair, we were chatting about high gas prices. If she and her husband had to do it over again, she said, they would have never moved to Ashburn. Their gas prices are driving a big dent in their budget. Yet, I learned, moving in closer was not an option. They would lose too much money, because their house was worth less than they paid for it. If her house is on Falkner’s Lane, I can understand why she would feel blue, since she might now own a house worth $200,000 less than what she paid for it.

What might turn things around? As I implied back in 2005, some public transportation might help. That is not to say that it doesn’t exist in Loudoun County, but it is very limited and assumes you commute to work in Washington, D.C. A resident of Ashburn could drive or bike to the Dulles North Transportation Center and from there take an express bus into Washington D.C. This bus is not cheap. It costs $6.00 each way with a smart card, or $7.00 if you pay cash.

What would someone in Ashburn do if they needed to commute to some other job center like Tyson’s Corner? Perhaps they could catch another bus at the West Falls Church Metro Station, where the bus stops on its way into Washington. What if they need to take public transportation to go to a doctor’s office in Reston, Virginia? It might be technically possible at certain times of the day, if they can make it work with the commuter bus schedule and make their bus transfers on time. What if they need to take public transportation to go to the grocery store? As best I can tell, there are no such routes. Even if routes were put into place, given that Ashburn is such a sprawled out community they might have to walk a mile or more just to get to a bus stop.

For all practical purposes, residents of Ashburn are stuck. Owning a car is required to live there. Their lifestyle is held hostage by the price of oil. Oil prices may seem astronomical, but they are fortunate that gas is available at any price. Without it, Ashburn would become a gigantic modern ghost town. Combine rising oil prices with a falling dollar and the negative net worth of so many residents of Ashburn and you end up with houses that are worth $200,000 less than they were just three years ago. You have whole communities of people with negative equities in their houses, unable to move and who are one job loss away from financial catastrophe.

My own house is about three miles away from Reston. Reston is a major source of employment and has thousands of great jobs for knowledge workers. In the unlikely event that you lose your job at one company in Reston, you can probably pick another one like it somewhere else in Reston. A Fairfax Connector bus serves my neighborhood, but it operates during rush hours only. However, my house is just three to five miles away from thousands of jobs, not ten or fifteen miles away like in Ashburn. Where I live, you can probably get to your job without a car if needed. I bicycle to work, which is three miles away, three or four days a week. Consequently, gas prices affect me much less than most commuters. Yet even if I worked downtown, I still would not be too badly inconvenienced. I could bike to the Herndon Monroe Park and Ride, which is also three miles away, or grab the 929 bus, which runs by a road a few hundred feet from my door. Once at the Herndon Monroe Park and Ride there are plentiful express buses that will take me to the West Falls Church Metro station. From there I can get to any place on the Metro system. If I needed to take a bus to nearby Reston, Herndon, or even some of the local malls, I can transfer at the Herndon Monroe Park and Ride. Obviously, I could get to these places more quickly by car, but it is possible. The same cannot necessarily be said about communities like Ashburn.

My neighborhood is not immune to the real estate slowdown either. Our house has lost about $75,000 in value since its 2005 peak. However, that is $75,000 though, not $200,000. There are plenty of houses for sale on my street, virtually all in excellent condition. We live in a terrific family neighborhood where owners take pride in their houses. I suggested to my stylist that they should move to a house on my street. She would be two miles from work so the cost of gasoline would be insignificant. However, with the negative equity in her house, moving is out of the question. Where would she and her husband find the money to pay off their loan on closing?

I do not think these underlying dynamics are likely to change. We are at the beginning of a fundamental transformation of America. This means our love affair with the automobile is likely to change dramatically. At best, I expect oil prices will stay about where they are now. Therefore, for many homeowners out in exurbia the financial squeeze, already bad, is likely to get much more painful. The long-term trends though are clear. Unless you can work from your home or can find employment close by that pays your bills, do not buy in the exurbia. If you are in the exurbia and can move in close, this is the time to do it.

Housing prices are down substantially in good neighborhoods like mine that are close to jobs and public transportation. Because prices are down and mortgages are very affordable, now is an excellent time to buy in these neighborhoods. It may not be easy to sell your current house, but as I learned in 1993 if you lower the price enough you can sell any house. You can buy a better and closer house at a substantial discount and be primed for appreciation during this seismic realignment of society. In addition, selection is plentiful.

To the many residents of Ashburn and similar far-flung communities who are feeling the squeeze, you have my sympathy. If I lived in Ashburn, I would still move closer in if I could find a way. The long-term housing dynamics for Ashburn and places like it look dismal. You may find yourself inhabiting a modern ghost town.

April 25th, 2008 at 09:25pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2008 | no comments

The Soulless City

When I find that four days pass between blog entries, it means either two things. It means either I am very sick, or I am very busy. Fortunately, in this case it was the latter.

I have returned from three days in the Soulless City. I did not need to take a bus or an airplane to get to this is a city. In fact, the Soulless City is less than ten miles from my house. It is a city without a real name, but it is a city nonetheless. Those of you who are Washingtonians probably know my destination. If you travel the Beltway around Washington, D.C., it is hard to miss. While it has no official name, it does have an unofficial one: Tyson’s Corner.

I understand that most towns and villages sprung up, quite literally, near the spring. They were built at the place in the river or stream where it became too shallow to navigate. Newer edge cities like Tyson’s Corner in Northern Virginia though owe their rise not to its proximity to water, but to its convenience to a number of prominent roads. The Capital Beltway was completed in 1964. It was not that long after that Mr. Tyson sold his considerable acreage near the intersection of Leesburg Pike (Route 7) and Chain Bridge Road (Route 123) to developers. This land, known informally as Mr. Tyson’s Corner, or Tyson’s Corner for short, just happened to be just off the new Capital Beltway.

Tyson’s Corner became a convenient location for one of the nation’s first large indoor shopping malls. By the late 1960s, Tyson’s Corner Mall had opened. It instantly became both a regional shopping Mecca and a neat place to visit, because back then any indoor mall was a novelty. Its convenience to the Capital Beltway meant that it had to be a place optimized for arrival and departure by car. It was also close to affordable bedroom communities. The shopping mall soon attracted other businesses. It was not too many years later, that Tyson’s Corner became noted as more of a convenient place for Beltway Bandits to set up shop rather than as a shopping destination. Tyson’s Corner Mall inspired numerous copies, not just in my region but nationwide. In time, one mall would not be enough for Tyson’s Corner. Around 1990, Tyson’s Galleria (also known as Tyson’s II) arose across Chain Bridge Road. While more upscale, it never enjoyed quite the success of the original Tyson’s Corner Mall, which itself has been thoroughly modernized and expanded.

I do my best to avoid Tyson’s Corner. I tend to avoid malls in general, but in particular, I avoid Tyson’s Corner. Its success has spawned a commuter’s nightmare, making it on any business day a time consuming hassle to get into or get out of. Although replete with many tall buildings, most of which are wholly uninteresting, it is also full of ugly wide boulevards with weedy and trash filled medians. On the sides of these roads are auto dealerships and many ordinary shopping centers. Routes 7 and 123 support six lanes of traffic each, plus ugly service roads and what feels like ten zillion traffic lights. It feels like each traffic light is engineered to ensure that you cannot get between any two points without encountering the next red light.

With a mailing address of McLean, Virginia, Tyson’s Corner it is actually an unincorporated edge city neither in McLean nor in Vienna, which straddles it to the south. I was there to attend three days of project management training. From my eighth floor window, I could look down on Leesburg Pike and grimace over the overwhelming view of aging office buildings, discount retailers, parking lots (and parking garages), asphalt and automobiles queued at traffic lights.

Tyson’s Corner is not a pedestrian friendly place. You would think with so many people working there that there would be plenty of dining options. Moreover, you would be right. Unfortunately, to get to most of them you have to get in your car, and thus get back in traffic. This in turn means waiting at red lights and creeping forward through the crush of traffic just to get to a McDonalds. If you are daring, you could walk to some of these dining destinations. I do not recommend it. For Tyson’s Corner is pedestrian hostile. It has the dubious notoriety of having the most dangerous pedestrian crosswalk in all of Fairfax County. You can try to walk across Chain Bridge Road at International Drive. If you are a praying type, you should say a prayer before doing so. You will have to cross nine lanes of traffic. Even a sprinter would have a hard time getting across the road before the crosswalk light changes. Do not expect drivers to be mindful of your presence.

Tyson’s Corner of course needs to be pedestrian friendly. Like most of Fairfax County, little thought was given to those without cars when it was developed. It was more important to bring in the growth than figure out sensible ways to manage the growth. You have to look hard to find anyone riding a bike around Tyson’s Corner. That would be even more dangerous than walking across International Drive. Since almost everyone commutes by car, the motorists are obsessed with getting in and out of Tyson’s Corner quickly. They will not cut a bicyclist any slack. Nevertheless, there is also the minor matter that there is no safe place to bike along the roads, and that includes the service roads, which are full of cars jockeying to get on the major roads. What sidewalks that do exist tend to appear and disappear rather suddenly.

There are actually people who live in Tyson’s Corner, but not very many. From its size you would think there would be hundreds of thousands of residents. Tyson’s Corner does not have residents as much as commuters. Approximately 20,000 people live in Tyson’s Corner and most of these live in townhouses on its outskirts, or in one of the few apartment or condominium communities.

There is some nightlife in Tyson’s Corner, if your idea of nightlife is going to the mall, or a Ruby Tuesday’s, or a movie theater. There are a few churches in the Tyson’s Corner area, but mostly they serve communities outside of it. Community theater? You are out of luck. Parks? There are a couple, but they are small and well hidden. Schools? Yes to day care centers and secretarial schools. It has exactly one public elementary school. A high school straddles its eastern edge. So accept what Tyson’s Corner actually is: a city where commercialism and the car is king. USA Today has its digs in Tyson’s Corner, along with many prominent software companies, many of whom pimp Uncle Sam to keep solvent. Parts of it try to be upscale yet even the upscale parts are typically surrounded by the garish and the mediocre.

There is talk of extending the Metrorail through Tyson’s Corner. To save money, planners want to put the Metro on elevated tracks. Tyson’s Corner is a logical destination so its arrival is long overdue. Many would prefer that the station be built underground. However, in this case, the federal government will not chip in; it would make their share too expensive. So likely if the Metrorail extension is actually built to Tysons, it will be placed on elevated tracks right through the center of this concrete metropolis. This, of course, will make the traffic in Tyson’s Corner for several years, already miserable, approach one of Dante’s lower levels of hell. It is the price or progress, or perhaps the price of insufficient land use planning by the Fairfax County government many years ago.

Three days in Tyson’s Corner was ample. I am glad to be free of it, and will have to work hard to wrest images of its congestion and ugliness from my mind. I pity those who work in Tyson’s Corner. I realize that job opportunities abound there, particularly if you are in the technology business. However, the place saps your soul. Maybe some day Tyson’s Corner will grow up and become a real city. Instead, it is more likely to remain just a destination for work and to buy stuff. It is a shame so little thought was given to properly managing its growth. It had the potential to be a real city.

March 21st, 2007 at 08:53pm Posted by Mark | Life 2007 | 3 comments

The Price of Growth

Here in Northern Virginia, residents on its western edge are in a bit of a tizzy. These areas in Loudoun and Prince William counties, along with counties even further to the west hugging the Shenandoah Mountains, are Washington D.C.’s latest and fastest growing bedroom communities. Uppity blue-blooded towns like Middleburg, home to wineries, the well moneyed and fox hunting, who have taken the Virginia piedmont for granted are feeling the press of encroaching civilization. To their south, new bedroom communities like Gainesville are growing by leaps and bounds. For the moment, this land is relatively cheap. This means many of these pastoral areas are now sporting boxy McMansions instead of foxholes. Most of these residents take pride in their new homes and their unspoiled views. You can see the Shenandoah Mountain much more clearly from places like Warrenton and Gainesville than you can from where I live, in Fairfax County.

Along with growth of course come all the trappings of growth: strip malls, congested highways, overcrowded schools and power lines. The strip malls do not seem to bother these latest residents. No doubt, they grumble about the crowded schools. Those who commute regularly from these far-flung exurbs to Washington D.C. have to groan through nightmarish commutes that get them up long before dawn and deposit them home long after the dinner hour. However, it seems to be a price they are willing to pay for a relatively affordable home in the exurbs, the white picket fence and to not hear neighbors playing rock music at 2 a.m. In time, they expect their houses will become excellent investments, as my closer in house has become for me in the 13 years we have lived in closer-in Fairfax County. Nevertheless, there appears to be one adjustment they cannot tolerate: new fifteen story power lines courtesy of Dominion Virginia Power and Pennsylvania based Alleghany Power.

The Virginia Piedmont is without question gorgeous real estate. At least for now it consists of many miles of generally rolling hills, mostly deforested, which make a gradual incline as they approach the Shenandoah Mountains to the west. Perhaps it is the relative lack of trees in this part of Virginia that has these new residents so up in alarm. Without them, it is hard to obscure the ugliness of these new power lines set to run through their neighborhoods. Some are watching their hopes for a tidy fortune disappear with the power lines.

She bought her 100-acre Delaplane farm last year, when it was an overgrown slice of land anchored by a rundown old farmhouse just off Interstate 66. She plowed all her savings into it. To pay down her $1 million mortgage and build up her horse business, she planned to sell a five-acre chunk within a couple of years.

Then came what her neighbors have come to regard as “the black cloud.”

“I’m probably sunk by this,” said Eaton, 45, seated by the wood stove she uses to heat the farmhouse. “No one will buy that land if some ugly power line could run right over their house. I’m broken off at the knees.”

I am having a hard time summoning much sympathy for these property owners. That is not to say that I too would not be aghast if Virginia Power decided to put up fifteen story power lines in my neighborhood. However, that was never a problem. My community was settled before I bought my house. In fact, there are high voltage power lines about half a mile from my house. There is many a nice house as well as a McMansion close to these power lines too. I have not taken the time to assess their value compared to homes like mine that are further away, but I doubt those high tension power lines have affected their property values too much. At least here in Fairfax County, it is location, location, location. If you live in Fairfax County, you are within twenty miles of an incredible number of diverse and well paying jobs. Residents seem to agree: being closer to good schools and good jobs is worth the price of having a high power line as a next-door neighbor.

On the other hand, what are the people in these latest exurbs thinking? Did they think growth would not involve some messy choices? Virginia and Alleghany Power understand what is going on: these areas are growing like gangbusters. Eventually they will not be able to meet demand for electricity unless they build the infrastructure now to support these communities. Hence the need for fifteen story power lines. The only question is where to place them. For the most part, they are hoping to place them not too far from I-66, which is the major interstate heading west from Washington D.C. This seems reasonable to me. I-66 is a bit of an eyesore as an interstate anyhow. It would be hard to make things much worse by putting a power line next to it, unless, of course, you have property close to these power lines.

Most homeowners in these areas will make out very well. I expect their home values will rise steadily. The land may no longer be so pristine. They may be spending their days in new traffic jams far from the city. Nevertheless, more swatches of Virginia piedmont seemed doomed to succumb to humanity’s need for large living spaces.

While people have to live somewhere, in my mind the obscenity are not plans to put in these admittedly ugly power lines. The real obscenity is the way these pristine lands are being transformed into new oversized habitats for humanity. These newly traffic-clogged roads once ferried the likes of statesmen like Thomas Jefferson. Instead of building in closer to cities like Washington, which already have large tracks of land that could be redeveloped, we have to push out further, destroying our environment, further reducing space needed for wild animals and exacerbating global warming in the process.

I understand why these people choose to live where they live. If I were a twenty something again it would probably seem like a logical choice to me. I probably could not afford to live closer in. However, I do not think I would be so naïve as to think my choice would not be without some necessary tradeoffs. Fifteen story power lines are part of the price of growth. These NIMBYies may be upset now, particularly if their property values are affected. Nevertheless, you can bet they would be much more upset if ten years from now their house suffered regular brownouts because the supply of power could not keep up with the demand.

They should swallow their misgiving and applaud Virginia and Alleghany Power for being proactive. If they do not like it, it is not too late to sell their estates in the exurbs, and move in to some smaller and more modest estate closer in. I suspect Mother Nature would prefer it if they made that kind of choice.

December 12th, 2006 at 08:12pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2006 | no comments

Virginia to gays: share our values or get the hell out

Today’s Washington Post brings more sad news that I am living in the wrong state. If it were not for this wonderful job three miles from my house and twenty years vested as a civil servant I would probably be living across the Potomac River, or heading to any place where the good citizens have some sense of justice and proportion. I will likely get there soon after I retire.

Because it looks like Virginia voters (courtesy of our legislature) will have an opportunity to enshrine in the state constitution once and for all that, you guessed it, marriage is between one man and one woman only. Knowing my fellow citizens as I unfortunately do, I am afraid this is a slam-dunk. For I live in the great homophobic state of Virginia.

I have written about gay marriage before. I have no illusions that, barring a U.S. Supreme Court decision, it will happen in Virginia during my lifetime. Naturally, I feel that laws discriminating against homosexuals like this are deeply wrong, hurtful and anti-American. But what really pains me today is I know that, just like the Jim Crow laws so plentiful throughout the South at one time, this constitutional amendment will someday either be stricken down by the U.S. Supreme Court or simply excised altogether by some future generation of ashamed Virginia voters. If Virginians are unwise enough to vote in this proposed constitutional amendment, they or their children will rue the day it passed. It is simply mean spirited. It is sadly just another big f— you to those citizens of the Commonwealth who happen to be attracted to their own gender.

As reprehensible as this amendment is, I already know that Virginia has a sad history of showing contempt for homosexuals. Entries like this one will refresh your memory. The Washington Post Magazine also reported sad stories like this. Make no mistake: in Virginia, homosexuals have under the law essentially become second-class citizens. Unable to legally discriminate against the people we used to hate, like Jews and African Americans, my fellow citizens deeply repressed feelings of rage must be channeled somewhere. So now it is chic to make life increasingly miserable for those who don’t happen to share our heterosexual values. The message is simply: emulate our values or get the hell out.

Therefore, as The Washington Post Magazine article sadly points out, gay couples increasingly simply get out. They know they are not wanted. For Virginia law will not allow gay couples to pass to each other even a nickel of their inheritance to each other. Should they want to be there for their spouse when they are in the hospital, they can be refused. For gays and lesbians, their partners are not legal relatives, and consequently not next of kin. It is the equivalent of spitting in their faces. It is simply mean.

Who are the people who are passing these laws? Mostly they claim to be Christians. It is a good thing Jesus does not live here. If he is the man depicted in the New Testament, it is clear he would be choking on his matzah right now. Jesus was after all someone who spoke of the parable of the Good Samaritan, the Negroes of Palestine at the time. He hung out with the lepers and the prostitutes. He avoided the moneychangers in the temple. Jesus was not about exclusivity. He was about inclusiveness. He told us to do to others, as we want them to do to us. If the homosexuals were running the world, would good heterosexual couples want them to void all their marriage contracts? Would they want to be stripped of their simple human right to pass on their inheritance to the person they love, or to be prohibited from giving their beloved comfort in a time of great stress?

It is not likely that they would. Nevertheless, modern Christianity, at least as practiced here in Virginia, has become so twisted and perverted that it has become 100% righteousness and 0% compassion, unless, of course, you model a life very, very close to their lives. Then they can identify with you. Then you become a member of the club. As for the rest of you: go to the back of the bus or better yet, just get the hell out of the commonwealth. If this cannot be done legally because of those darned liberal judges, well, find any legal way you can to turn the screws on those whose values and morals you personally do not agree with.

In addition to causing needless hurt and distress in the lives of good American people, such attitudes only serve to divide us more as a nation. Therefore, at least for a while, the citizens of Virginia are likely to get their wish. The bisexual, gay, lesbian and transgender community will increasingly cross the Potomac River to live in Washington D.C. or Maryland or any place where the people have some compassion in their hearts for those with different values. The sad result: red states will get redder and blue states will get bluer. The culture wars will grow. Rather than trying to become a more inclusive nation, these misguided laws will simply drive us into increasingly hateful and xenophobic behavior.

I wish that the citizens of my state could find some compassion in their hearts for those unlike them. Instead we have this constant stream of mean spirited laws and now this reprehensible constitutional amendment. Yet the time of their repeal will come eventually. It may take 50 years. It may take a hundred years. Yet it will happen in time, yes even here in Virginia. Just as we once hung our heads in shame for tolerating evils like slavery, just as we flagrantly hung on to white and black only schools as recently as 1964, the time will come when we will look back on these sad modern times wholly aghast that we could have ever been so shallow, intolerant and mean spirited.

January 26th, 2006 at 09:12pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2006 | no comments

A Governor with a Clue

Tim Kaine has only been governor of Virginia for a couple days, but he is already showing unusual common sense. Governor Kaine has proposed what has hitherto been unthinkable here in the Old Dominion: allowing counties to restrict housing growth until the transportation infrastructure exists to sustain it.

“Over the long term, the most important single change we can make is to reform the way we plan at both the state and local levels,” he said. “We cannot allow uncoordinated development to overwhelm our roads and infrastructure.”

Grasping this idea is not like trying to understand calculus. I am hoping that our new governor will prove adept at the power of persuasion. If history is any guide, this proposal will probably not get too far. With zero limits on campaign contributions for those running for state offices here in Virginia, candidates supported by business interests tend to have unfair advantages. Not surprisingly then, developers have enjoyed undue influence in our state government, and are often the largest contributors to state campaigns.

Predictably, developers and real estate agents are aghast by Kaine’s proposal. Two hundred of them are planning to come to Richmond to lobby against the governor’s initiative. The times though may be a changing at last. I live near the edge of Loudoun County, hitherto a reliable, solidly Republican county. Yet the citizens of Loudoun County picked Tim Kaine over his Republican opponent Jerry Kilgore by five percentage points.

Was it that the small but active Muslim community in the county that came out en masse for Kaine that made the difference? Or did Kaine’s message resonate with them? Most moved to the county in order to find affordable housing only to soon find traffic jams and crowded schools. Additional new housing keeps going up, but the infrastructure is not keeping pace.

Virginia is perhaps like most of the country. The philosophy of local governments has been to accommodate developers and worry about dealing with the overcrowded roads and schools later. Not that the counties had much of a choice. Virginia law left them with few options.

Tim Kaine though gets it and is the first politician of his stature to actually to promote sensible growth in the state. As you build houses, also build an infrastructure sized to fit all the people, cars and houses that will be placed there. That means creating four and six lane roads when the houses are put in, not decades later when the existing roads have morphed into giant parking lots. Developers, naturally, would prefer that local governments absorb these costs. They want to shift the true costs of creating new civilization to all taxpayers. This lets them keep their house prices artificially low. By the time these bills come due, they have moved on to literally greener pastures.

What would the premium be on a new house if it included the costs for the wider roads and bigger schools that are needed? My guess is that it would raise the cost of a new house by $50,000 or more. That suits me fine. I think this would provide powerful incentive to redevelop land near or in cities, where the infrastructure already exists. As many developers are learning, there is good money in building closer in. It would also discourage destroying our fast disappearing natural world.

Clearly, our nation’s population will continue to grow. Our residents have to live somewhere. Nevertheless, that does not mean those who choose to live in new developments should get a subsidy from taxpayers. If the true costs of these developments had to be paid up front, our choices might be much different.

Our current rate of population growth is not sustainable forever. Governor Kaine’s proposal is a sensible first step toward ensuring a better quality of life for the citizens of the Commonwealth. If proposals like his become more widely adopted, what we are likely to witness is a form of reverse cost shifting. Residents seeking cheap new houses are going to move to communities where house prices are artificially subsidized by local governments. This will just increase the cost pressures on these local governments. Eventually these governments will figure out that their communities are the ones getting screwed, and states with planned communities are benefiting by their lack of common sense. I hope that this will drive desperately needed controlled growth. In addition, I also expect that the quality of life of our citizens will improve.

January 17th, 2006 at 08:30pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2006 | no comments

The chickens have come home to roost, at last

Occam’s Razor likes to peer into the future. Sometimes I get it right, and sometimes I get it wrong. Overall though my ability to prognosticate is good. After all not many like me were predicting prior to our war in Iraq that it would turn into the insurgency that it did.

My timing can be off though. Perhaps I see trends too early. Clearly, after reelecting Bush a year ago Americans are now having buyer’s remorse. Had the election been held even a month later the presidency might well have flipped. However, shortly after last year’s election, I pointed out that Bush had set in motion events that could not be stopped. His comeuppance could not be forever postponed.

Events in 2005 have cascaded into a crescendo of bad news not just for Bush, but also for Republican rule. Bush’s approval ratings have tumbled even further, averaging recently at around 37%. While we will have to wait a year to find out the damage done to the Republican’s hold on Congress, we might get a hint from scattered elections this month that another political earthquake is coming.

One sign that should be very worrisome to Republicans is that Tim Kaine (a Democrat) won the governorship here in reliably red state of Virginia. It took a lot for Democrat Mark Warner to win the governorship in state four years ago. To win he had to convince Virginia voters that he was both a good ol’ boy and was not a liberal.

As governor Warner defied conventional logic and proved that even in a red state voters will support pragmatic taxes increases. Working with minority Democrats in the state assembly and a handful of moderate Republicans he was able to pass a modest half-cent increase in the state sales tax. As a result serious money started flowing into urgently needed transportation projects. In addition Virginia schools were able to receive desperately needed additional aid to keep up with growing population and testing demands. His pragmatic approach found wide support across the state. Arguably Tim Kaine, the former Lieutenant Governor, rode on Warner’s coattails. He won the gubernatorial election by more than five percent against his Republican opponent, Jerry Kilgore. More astonishingly, solidly reliably counties like nearby Loudoun County voted solidly for Kaine. Kilgore’s antitax message rang hollow and seemed shrill. Virginians are returning toward embracing pragmatic government again. Apparently good schools and roads are more important than paying a half a cent more in sales taxes.

Kilgore found that being a Republican was no longer much of a selling card, even in Virginia. He avoided President Bush, who wanted to campaign with him in the state, until the very end. His one campaign appearance with Bush shortly before the election seemed to seal his defeat. Yes, even here in the reliably red state of Virginia, more people disapprove of Bush than approve of him. The result of these elections suggests Bush is now toxic. In addition Republicans are being viewed by voters with jaundiced eyes. Apparently even Republicans can interpret poll number and are sobering up. They realize they may be out of office next year if things don’t change. Consequently we are witnessing serious fractures of the Republican machine in Washington. Despite all the odds, the budget cuts proposed by fiscal conservatives, which targeted the poor by cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, could not win over moderate Republicans. The bill could not even pass by removing the requirement for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This is an amazing denouement for a party that just a couple months ago believed it could ram through congress pretty much anything its leadership wanted.

I do not need to spend much time restating Bush’s problems because most of you keep up on current events. Bush has been carpet bombed since his reelection. From the deepening quagmire in Iraq (for which we have no realistic exit strategy), to his surreal and deadly mishandling of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, to skyrocketing gas prices, to fumbled Supreme Court nominations, to indictment against Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scotter” Libby, Bush is more than wounded. He has had limbs blown off.

Americans are in a surly mood. The economy is doing okay, but the benefits are not trickling down to them. For the average American, expenses keep exceeding income. The new expenses are costs we can do little to trim back. As a result the middle class continues to shrink. Many, like my wife who managed to find a new job recently, will work for much less than they made in their last job. While many find their income is down, necessary expenses like health care, gasoline and home heating oil keep skyrocketing. We wonder how much longer the American Dream will be available. And we wonder why we are allowing the dream to slip away. Why did we elect people who did not serve our interests, but instead slavishly served only the interests of those that funded their campaigns? This anxiety is reflected in rather disturbing consumer confidence statistics.

The voters are sobering up. Over the last five years our country has been raped and pillaged by Republicans. What we are witnessing is the intense anger, and even hatred, of those who were disenfranchised. We no longer have a government that even makes a pretense about serving the common good. It serves those who support Bush and the Republican Party and gleefully shafts the rest. Both the president and the Congress are drunk on power. More tax cuts for the rich in a time of soaring budget deficits? Until recently, this was not a problem. Weaken air pollution laws as a response to hurricane relief? Sure, why not? Cry over Terri Schiavo’s brain dead body, but let senior citizens drown to death in New Orleans’ nursing home? Not a problem either. After all, they couldn’t vote and beside they were not one of their kind.

I do not think this situation will improve. I think it will continue to get worse. I hear people say that at 37% approval ratings, Bush has reached his floor. I don’t think so. I think it will go even lower in the months ahead. Bush is now in the rapids and he is losing control of the ship of state. The time is ripe for a change in congressional power, and we should see it in the 2006 elections. It remains to be seen though whether Democrats are savvy enough to fully capitalize on the moment. As I suggested Democrats need a new Contract with America. It is painfully clear at this point what one party Republican rule has delivered misery for the average American. A clear vision for the future should turn the House of Representatives back to its traditional Democratic Majority. With only a third of the seats up for grabs in the Senate in 2006, it is less likely that Democrats can take that chamber too, but it is not outside the bounds of possibility. Bereft of the public trust, Americans have little choice but to embrace an alterative or to suffer through even more disastrous mismanagement of their government.

A stiff wind of pragmatism is beginning to sweep across America again. It will be good to feel it again. It has been sorely missed.

November 14th, 2005 at 09:03pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2005 | no comments

Stop Selling Our Highways

The State of Virginia recently received an unsolicited offer from a group of businesses. This consortium wants to take over the operation and maintenance of the Dulles Toll Road, a major thoroughfare here in Northern Virginia. The details are sketchy but the group appears to want the right to run and improve the road for the next fifty years. In return they will give the Commonwealth about a billion dollars in ready cash and commit to making modest improvements to the road.

The Dulles Toll Road connects Northern Virginia inside the beltway and the Capital Beltway with the key business and residential areas in Northern Virginia. These include Tysons Corner, Reston, Herndon and Washington Dulles International Airport. (Airport traffic rides free on the Dulles Access Road. The Dulles Toll Road runs parallel to and outside the Dulles Access Road.) The Dulles Toll Road also connects with the Dulles Greenway, a private and obscenely expensive interstate quality road that for those who live in northern Loudoun County.

The Dulles Toll Road is one of these roads that most residents can neither live with nor without. With four lanes of traffic in each direction, it moves a crushing number of commuters every day. During our extended rush hours, and particularly where it merges with the Capital Beltway, it acts as a giant parking lot. Cars spew tons of hydrocarbons tediously wait to merge onto the beltway. On the other hand, there are not a whole lot of alternatives during rush hours. The back roads, such as they are, are just as congested. The typical commuter now pays $1.25 each way for the privilege of waiting in traffic. The tolls were recently increased fifty cents in each direction, ostensibly to help pay for a future extension to the Washington Metrorail system to Dulles Airport.

The current group-think is that corporations must be able to do everything better than government. So naturally there are plenty of people (most of them Republicans) who would be glad to turn over essential services like maintaining our roads to the private sector. Virginia has been doing a lot of this “innovative thinking” lately. For example, the state plans to let two companies create HOT (High-Occupancy Toll) lanes on 14 miles of the Capitol Beltway. Apparently, the Virginia Public-Private Transportation Act legalizes such dubious deals. Naturally, Congress wants to smooth the way for more of these private sector road projects. Yes, Congress wants to give corporations the right to raise money for private toll roads with bonds that are exempt from federal income taxes. (And guess who will be left holding the tax burden.)

Why is the Dulles Toll Road is under the radar of private developers? It is no mystery to me. First, it is a beautiful and well-maintained road. Second, it is a huge and profitable cash cow, generating profits in the tens of millions of dollars every year. It has a captive set of customers with few alternatives except to move out of the area. Third, while the consortium can make claims about making improvements to the road, there is not much they can really do to speed up the traffic. That is because the traffic simply bottlenecks at the exit points. These are principally Tysons Corner and the Capitol Beltway. Oh sure they promise to widen exit and entrance ramps from the beltways onto the toll road. Fat chance that will do much good. Until the dubious day that the beltway gets eight lanes in each direction, the traffic during rush hours on the toll road will not speed up.

Perhaps they will turn the one lane in each direction that is currently reserved for carpools into a HOT lane. This should allow anyone with sufficient dough to cruise at highway speeds, even during rush hour. In addition, perhaps those HOT lanes could feed into the HOT lanes planned for construction on the Capital Beltway.

Do we see a pattern here? Consumers can expect higher tolls from these deals but little relief from congestion. For those with the money you will have your HOT lanes but you will pay premium prices. For most HOT lanes are designed for flexible pricing. The idea is HOT lanes should never be congested, so authorities keep raising the tolls until they run smoothly. It is another “wonderful” example of the market economy at work. Yes, it is wonderful all right. If you are rich you will get where you want to go quickly. As for the rest of us — you know the “little people” who live on normal incomes and do not get special tax breaks — we will be stuck in worse traffic and paying more for it.

Ugh. Let us just say no to more of this nonsense. Here is a crazy notion, but one that has worked well for much of our nation’s history: let us keep the roads public and free. If we have to have toll roads, let us make them equal access. Our public roads are not the airlines. There should not be a first class section for the privileged and coach class for the rest of us. Maybe in Animal Farm some pigs are more equal than others are. However, if I have any influence, it will not happen in my country.

I have written Virginia Governor Mark Warner expressing my displeasure at this brazen attempt by the private sector to pick my pocket. I hope if you live in Virginia that you will write too. Nevertheless, wherever you live, you need to be watchful and make your transportation views known. We complain about gas taxes. We raise hell if our legislatures want to up the tax by even a nickel a gallon. However, we will allow private companies to skim hefty profits off our public roads. You know what this really is? It is a tax increase. Only this time instead of any profit from these roads going into more transportation projects or, God forbid, even our public schools, they go straight to stockholders of these corporations.

No more. Sadly, this is more evidence that we now live in a country of, by and for the corporation. What is next? Is a private company going to buy the roads in my subdivision? Will I have to pay a toll to get out of my own driveway? Is this the kind of enlightened private sector innovation we want to foster? Or are we being played for fools? I suspect the latter.

July 27th, 2005 at 08:37pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2005 | 2 comments

So What’s the Problem with Bringing a Gun to School?

Welcome to the schizophrenic state of Virginia. Last week a teacher at the high school my daughter attends, Westfield High School, brought a loaded gun to school. No he didn’t actually bring it in the school. He brought it on school property and kept it in his locked car. The teacher, Timothy D. Fudd, now faces up to five years in prison for his offense.

Please understand I am not actually in favor of bringing any kind of gun on school property. But this is Virginia, after all. We’re a gun crazy state. Here in Virginia it is perfectly legal to carry a concealed weapon (except, apparently, on school property) or even wear side arms openly in public in places like restaurants. Want to play Wild West and strap some loaded pistols to your waist and bring them into your friendly neighborhood Hooters? Not a problem in the Old Dominion. It’s completely legal. You may get more than a few odd stares and people may gravitate toward tables on the other side of the restaurant. Because, fortunately, this is not an every day occurrence. But it’s quite legal.

As I noted in a previous entry, it’s also perfectly legal to bring your gun to teenage recreation centers in Virginia too. And that’s why I have a problem with Mr. Fudd’s prosecution. Timothy D. Fudd could have packed a couple pistols and brought them into his local teen center and it would have been completely legal. Indeed, the NRA would have cheered him on for exercising the important second amendment rights that they spent so much time battling Fairfax County to win. At this point I figured guns were allowed everywhere in this state. I figured you could put them in your nightstand next to your hospital bed and the nurse was not allowed to complain. But apparently you cannot bring them on school property. Go figure.

I’m trying to figure out what passes for logic here. Is the worry that a loaded gun in a school parking lot might encourage a student to break into the car? Might the student then use the weapon to cause some mayhem? Certainly it is a risk but why worry about it? I mean guns don’t kill people, people kill people. If we were to worry that this might encourage kids might do this on school property then we might as well also start worrying that adults might do the same thing. In fact adults do do the same thing in neighborhoods across the country, resulting in about thirty thousand gun related homicides a year.

Virginia bends over backwards to accommodate the gun lobby. This spring alone we passed fifteen new gun laws, more than any other state in the country and all of them pleased the NRA. Some examples: people who already have a concealed weapons permit are no longer subject to the one gun a month purchase limitation. Woo hoo! Ditto for gun collectors: take them home by the truckload from your “private sale”. Our legislature says go for it! Also, people who live in other states that allow concealed weapons are welcome to bring them in and conceal them in Virginia too. The more the merrier.

So now poor Timothy D. Fudd may spend five years in a Virginia prison for bringing a loaded weapon on school property. He went the extra mile by locking the darn thing in his car. Surely he can be forgiven if he pleads ignorance. In this state gun ownership, possession and display is encouraged. Maybe he just got confused. Perhaps he was at his local teen recreation wearing his perfectly legal and loaded pistols strapped to his waist. Perhaps while he was there he was encouraging teens to join him at a nearby rifle range to learn about exercising their second amendment rights. Since guns can be worn openly or concealed in teen recreation centers, why should there be a problem leaving a loaded gun in a locked car in a school parking lot?

I honestly don’t understand why the NRA is not helping with this man’s legal defense. Mr. Fudd is African American after all, and this is an important community that needs to be encouraged to exercise their second amendment rights.

But most shocking off all: this occurred only ten miles from the NRA National Headquarters. Where is the outrage?

April 30th, 2005 at 09:41pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2005 | no comments

More Virginia Legislature Madness

It’s dangerous when our legislature is in session. It seems they can’t help themselves. Rather than concentrate on boring things like funding roads and education they have to find ways to infringe on our civil liberties instead. And lately they seem to have this thing for women who might actually want to choose when they get pregnant.

It started back in early January with the introduction of HB 1677. Delegate John A. Cosgrove (Republican, naturally) of Chesapeake decided it should be a crime if a woman did not report a miscarriage within twelve hours. She would be guilty of a Class 1 Misdemeanor. In other words after suffering the trauma of a miscarriage, any woman who didn’t have her wits sufficiently together to promptly report the experience would be a lawbreaker. For this “crime” she could spend up to 12 months in jail and pay a $2,500 fine.

I, along with many other Virginians, were outraged. Fortunately we had time to act on this bill before it was presented for an up or down vote. I did my part and contacted my state representative and senator. And thankfully this horrible bill was withdrawn.

But the wingnuts are back. Yesterday the Virginia Senate passed the Devolites Davis bill, SB 456. This is an amendment to a bill submitted by Sen. Mary Margaret Whipple. Her bill simply defined contraception as the prevention of the union of sperm or egg or implantation of an egg in the uterine wall. No problem there: this seems like an obvious and straightforward definition.

But our legislature couldn’t leave well enough alone. As the Hampton Roads Daily Press put it:

[Whipple's] bill would legally define contraception as the prevention of the union of sperm and egg or implantation of an egg in the uterine wall.

Commonly prescribed birth-control pills prevent pregnancy through both means. Abortion opponents who contend life begins at conception insist that denying a fertilized egg the opportunity to attach itself to the womb and develop as a fetus is a form of abortion.

Whipple’s bill and a companion measure by Del. Kristin Amundson, D-Fairfax County, would head off anti-abortion groups’ efforts to classify birth control pills as a form of abortion. That could subject obtaining the pills, intrauterine devices and other forms of birth-control to Virginia’s growing list of abortion restrictions, including parental notification and consent for girls under 18…

Sen. Jeannemarie Devolites Davis’ floor amendment applied a less specific dictionary definition of pregnancy. It was adopted largely along party lines in a 21-17 vote with one abstention.

Rather than take the chance that this amended bill could classify birth control pills as abortion devices Whipple has withdrawn the legislation.

Meanwhile, Delegate Mark Cole introduced HB 1918, which wants to give any fertilized human egg protection. “That life begins at the moment of fertilization and the right to enjoyment of life guaranteed by Article 1, Section 1 of the Constitution of Virginia is vested in each born and preborn human being from the moment of fertilization.” Never mind the inconvenient scientific fact that life does not begin at conception. A fertilized egg is a zygote. It cannot grow nor does it divide at this stage. It is inert. It has not even divided once. Conception occurs when the zygote travels into the uterus and implants itself onto the wall of the uterus. It is when the zygote comes in contact with the blood of the uterine wall that energy allows cell division to begin. It is then that something resembling life has actually started.

I hate learning about these things after the fact. But if you are a concerned citizen of Virginia you cannot wait until these stories show up months later in The Washington Post. Their editors there seem to be asleep on these issues. But you can get on the Democracy for Virginia Legislative Sentry mailing list. And be prepared to act quickly before yet another needlessly intrusive bill is quietly voted into law and one more right you’ve always taken for granted vanishes from the Commonwealth.

January 25th, 2005 at 09:01pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2005 | no comments

A Tribute to Robert E. Simon

Sometimes giants do walk among us.

In 1984 I moved from Gaithersburg, Maryland to Reston, Virginia solely because I wanted to live in Reston. Earlier that year I had attended a science fiction convention in Reston. While the convention was not memorable, the time I spent in Reston was. Here was a planned community that was done right.

It was the architect Robert E. Simon who, at age 50, used the proceeds of the sale of Carnegie Hall in New York to buy what was then called the Sunset Hills Farm in Northern Virginia. He purchased 6,750 acres to create this unique planned community. This community he decided would be unlike anything done before. It would be a community that would be affordable to all income types. It would allow people to live close to where they worked. When housing was built the lots would not first be cleared of trees. Rather, housing would be built around the trees. Every resident would be within walking distance of a village center where they could buy the necessities of life. And neighborhoods would be connected to each other via trails that would wind their ways through the woods.

Beginning with the creation of Lake Anne Plaza in 1964 the community slowly blossomed. In the mid 1980s the rest of the world finally discovered Reston. Since then there has been no turning back. Reston has become a city with a cosmopolitan feel and a large, vibrant downtown. The Reston Town Center (what amounts to downtown Reston) is something of an oxymoron because there is no town called Reston. In fact there is no city called Reston. Reston is just a place in the middle of Fairfax County. It is wholly unincorporated. But there is an organization, the Reston Association, which ensures that Robert E. Simon’s vision for the town is maintained. The Association can be something of a pain to many residents but it has proven its value. Reston is now a very chic place to live. All those covenants and attention to detail have paid off in property values that are markedly higher than the areas around it. Although it was part of Simon’s vision to create a planned community affordable to all income ranges, I found in 1993 that I could no longer afford to live in Reston if I wanted to also live in a single-family house. Now I live in a nice neighborhood three miles down the road. But it is no Reston.

I miss Reston and I still feel it calling to me. Someday I hope I can go back and live there again. This nostalgic feeling returned this weekend when I (literally) got off my rear end and peddled up to Reston. I’ve been reacquainting myself with a bike lately. Last Thursday I biked to work. I’m finding biking is a convenient way to get the exercise I need. It is also beneficial to the environment. My employer, the U.S. Geological Survey sits at the southwest corner of Reston. It was one of the first employers of note to arrive in Reston. It sat largely by itself on a wooded campus when it opened in 1973. Now it is surrounded by high tech office buildings sporting a mixture of clean industries all very much in line with Simon’s vision for the community.

While I often pass through Reston on my way to somewhere else, and make regular trips to shop in Reston I haven’t really seen Reston in a long time. With my bike I am seeing and appreciating Reston anew. In doing so I feel both nostalgia and a deep hunger to live in Reston again. Yesterday I biked through an apartment complex where I used to live in the south side of Reston. I then biked down the trail that connected my old apartment building with the woods behind it. You can travel for miles on some of these trails and hardly see a house. Instead you feel the presence of nature all around you. I found it intoxicatingly delightful. It was hard to believe I used to take this for granted.

Today I felt more adventurous and biked all the way to Lake Anne Plaza where the community began. When I had first moved to Reston in 1984 my wife and I lived in an apartment complex across the street. We walked around Lake Anne many times. The community of Lake Anne has aged, but it is still a wonderful place. Townhouses, condos and a few single-family homes hug the shores of the lake. Ducks wander along the boat docks looking for handouts. A huge fountain perpetually blows water into the sky from the middle of the lake.

And there sitting on the bench by the dock is a bronze statue of Robert E. Simon. And as I sat there resting my keister on the bench who should amble on by past his own statue but Robert E. Simon himself. You see about ten years ago Bob Simon decided to spend his last years living in Reston. He walked by his statue without giving it a glance and invited a small group of friends waiting for him to join him in a pontoon boat tied to the dock. At age 90 he is stooped but walks around without a cane. He was relaxed and laughing as he piloted the boat out of the dock and into the lake.

This is not the first time I have seen Bob Simon in Reston. I have seen him a couple of times at the church I attend, the Unitarian Universalist Church in Reston. While I don’t believe he is a UU, he has attended forums we’ve put together on the Middle East. As best I can tell he sits there otherwise unrecognized by us inhabitants of his community. He lives nearby in the Heron House, a tall dozen story high condominium that overlooks Lake Anne. I am sure he is a fixture both in bronze and in person on Lake Anne.

I wish I visited Lake Anne more often. And I wish today I had the presence to go down and introduce myself to him. I would have liked to thank him for his vision. But also I would like to thank him for leading by example. I am sure Bob Simon is one very rich man, but he chose to spend his last years as an ordinary citizen, enjoying the fruits of his labor. Reston is not a perfect place. It has become more commercialized than I suspect he would have preferred. And it can be expensive to live there. But it is still very much an oasis for the human soul: a place where one can live in some reasonable harmony with nature and feels its presence all around you.

Thanks Bob.

May 30th, 2004 at 02:50pm Posted by Mark | Sociology | no comments