Occam’s Razor

Jim Webb: Mr. Smith goes to Washington

As regular readers know, I have been keeping my ears close to the ground these days. I still hear a political earthquake coming tomorrow. Of course, I could be wrong. I certainly was wrong calling the 2004 election. As I ponder political earthquakes closer to where I live in Northern Virginia, I hear another one coming: tomorrow Jim Webb, who was virtually unknown at the beginning of this year, will defeat George Allen in his bid for reelection to the U.S. Senate. Virginia will wake up Wednesday and find it has wisely chosen a person of substance over a man of image.

Recent polls have been saying this race is too close to call. Very recent polls give hope to both George Allen and challenger Jim Webb. I think Webb will win though because he is the real deal, whereas George Allen is just another George W. Bush clone.

Really, it is eerie how much George Allen imitates President Bush. Bush pretends to be a Texan, even though he is a New Englander. Allen pretends to be a Virginian, even though he is a Californian. Both go out of their ways to be perceived as Southerners. Both were governors of very red Southern states who touted dubious achievements in education. Bush claimed to have turned around the Texas public schools. Allen promoted the now institutionalized Virginia Standards of Learning. These tests, like those in Texas, have become so dumbed down that my senior age high school daughter informs me, “You have to be really stupid not to pass a SOL exam.” Both belong to mainstream Protestant denominations: United Methodist in Bush’s case, Presbyterian in Allen’s case. Both avoided serving in war but at least Bush served in the Texas Air National Guard. Perhaps the closest identification to Bush is seen in Allen’s votes. He voted for virtually whatever Bush promoted, including our failed war in Iraq. He was one of the last Republicans to stop insisting the way to win in Iraq was to stay the course.

Until a few months ago, many Republicans considered Allen to be a leading contender for the Republican Presidential nomination in 2008. No one thought Webb had a snowball’s chance in hell at defeating this popular ex-Governor and senator. You know what happened since then to bring Allen down, so I will not repeat these incidents. Suffice to say that George Allen was one of many Republicans who were not agile enough to respond to changing political winds. Moreover, he, like our president, was headstrong enough to think he could do things like put Confederate Flags and nooses in his office and it did not matter or speak to his true character.

For a politician like Allen, his worst nightmare is a challenger who seems tailored to expose all his personal deficiencies. Jim Webb seemed to come out of nowhere. He did not even start running for the Senate until February. A successful Secretary of the Navy under President Reagan, U.S. Naval Academy graduate and decorated marine, Webb was awarded the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts while a Marine platoon leader in Vietnam. A successful author of eight books, self-described Reagan Democrat and former follower of Ross Perot’s Reform Party, he was moved to become a Democrat and run against George Allen because Allen supported Bush’s disastrous war in Iraq. While not totally without his share of controversy, Webb comes across as a clear-eyed and sober patriot while Allen comes across as George W. Bush lite: handsome, giving the appearance of being a family values man, but headstrong and with obvious vindictive and prejudicial sides. His real constituency was white Protestant Republicans, and everyone knew it.

Webb is something of a political oddity. In many ways he is who I would be if I were to be a politician. Unfortunately, I could never begin to match his credentials. He is the genuine reluctant candidate, motivated by conviction rather than ego. Webb is a man who refuses to pick up the phone and schmooze donors for campaign contributions. He may be the last of his kind. In spite of this, he has pulled in impressive campaign contributions, including huge amounts of relatively small donations from the Netroots and from ordinary Joes like me.

I was one of the 3% or so of Virginia Democrats who voted in the primary. Despite Webb’s previously Republican leanings, I was enthusiastic about voting for Webb. He won that election narrowly, and he may well win tomorrow’s election narrowly too. This time though I expect we will see something close to record turnout for a midterm election. His election will send a powerful signal that genuine character matters again in politicians. Voters will reward honest accomplishments rather than empty rhetoric. Webb is authentic and genuine. He is perhaps the last of the Mr. Smiths to go to Washington. He will probably be the only politician in Congress who will not be influenced by special interests. It may doom him to a single term. Still, it will be a refreshing six-year term.

I expect big things from Jim Webb. Should he choose to seek even higher office some day, I think he will find an enthusiastic group of supporters from both sides of the political spectrum, as long as he remains true to his values. His campaign says he was born fighting. He has some huge fights ahead in the Senate on behalf of not just Virginians, but the vast majority of us disenfranchised Americans. Virginians: let us establish a beachhead for him by voting for Jim Webb tomorrow.

November 6th, 2006 at 09:16pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2006 | one comment

Virginia Emerges from Budget Gridlock

I note with relief that the Virginia legislature finally seems to have agreed to a budget solution. It took more than three months, much vitriol, and chronic wailing and gnashing of teeth. But our Republican controlled legislature seems to have bit the bullet and ever so modestly raised taxes. In brief our sales taxes will be going up from 4.5 cents per dollar to 5 cents, while taxes on groceries will be eased. The cigarette tax, currently the lowest in the nation at 2.5 cents a pack will go to 30 cents a pack, which is still a bargain. The personal property tax on cars, which former Governor Jim Gilmore tried to phase out altogether, will be frozen. This means no further relief for Virginia drivers, who will have to pay 30% of the car tax out of their own pockets. Income tax rates remain unchanged.

It seems that since Virginia can’t print its own money it can’t have its cake and eat it too. No matter how many times the legislature did the math it couldn’t satisfy its constituents, fund basic services and not raise taxes. It appears that even in my notoriously anti-tax state there are certain minimum expenditures that if not met the public will squawk about. This includes basic funding the public schools, prisons, public safety and roads.

To come to agreement Republicans in the Virginia House had to actually turn against their own speaker. It was House Speaker William J. Howell who overreached his power. Time and time again he refused to even allow conversations of new taxes to come up. Eventually Republicans felt stifled and frustrated, and a critical mass joined with the Democrats to do the people’s business. Consequently we have the bizarre reality of a Republican controlled legislature falling behind a moderate Democratic governor and minority Democrats to raise taxes.

The reason it happened first in Virginia is not because Virginia is a progressive state. Far from it. It happened here in Virginia because Virginia has always been a niggardly state. Advocates for the infirmed and mentally retarded made numerous trips to Richmond to try to persuade the legislature to support basic services for those who could not help themselves but who had been a casualty of declining tax revenues. In the Virginia House their pleas fell on deaf ears. If you can believe it, our legislature was more concerned about not raising taxes than about assuring basic mental health care for our most needy and desperate citizens. “Let all but a handful wander the streets,” seemed to be their enlightened motto in dealing with the mentally ill. However, when asked to cut subsidies for Virginia tobacco farmers they couldn’t summon the will.

Maybe there is a silver lining in this. Perhaps this is the beginning of the end of the “no new taxes ever” revolution. If it can happen here in Virginia it can happen anywhere. A precedent has now been established. Apparently there is a point to having a state government. If our House had had its way, the tax increase would have had to be put to a referendum. But this strategy failed. Citizens began telling their representatives they were elected to make tough decisions, not pass the buck. Duh!

Anti-tax advocates are threatening to have those Republicans who voted for the tax increase voted out in 2005. It remains to be seen if they will succeed. But I sense even among Virginia’s most conservative voters there is some floor of basic fiscal sanity that they expect from their legislative representatives. In their zeal for no new taxes, they aren’t going to turn the state into a dysfunctional organization. In 2004 we may have found that boundary at last. Ideology, however reluctantly, has yielded to pragmatism.

I salute those brave Republicans who broke with the party leadership on this issue. Their “leaders” demonstrated zero leadership and zero courage. This $1.36B tax increase is hardly more tax and spend. It barely makes a dent in the state’s needs, which have been woefully out of balance since the economy tanked in 2001. But at least during this year this new revenue will keep Virginia from irretrievably falling into fiscal madness. While insufficient it is a step in the right direction. And it does allow counties, cities and colleges to now plan their own budgets.

April 29th, 2004 at 09:24pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2004 | no comments

Hold the presses! Virginia Republicans are raising taxes!

Things are tough in Richmond, Virginia. Our legislature is back for its annual attempt to have its cake and eat it too. Last year it papered over massive state budget problems. This year it has run out of creative ways to keep basic state services going and not raise taxes. Needless to say for our Republican legislature this has involved a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth.

True to form for the first few weeks our Republican legislature made brave promises that it would not raise taxes and parroted the usual silly assertions that the state government was just spending too much. Our governor Mark Warner, after campaigning on a platform of no new taxes, submitted his plan to address our state’s serious revenue deficiencies. It said that yep it looks like we really need to raise taxes folks but let’s call it rewriting the tax code instead of a tax increase. In the legislature it was, of course, declared immediately dead on arrival. On Monday Governor Warner conceded as much. But that still leaves that pesky little problem of how to balance our state budget (required by law) and not cut funding further for schools, transportation, the prisons and all those other essential services.

So how did the Commonwealth get into this mess? There is no denying the economic slowdown affected Virginia as well as virtually every other state out there. But it is more than that. During the 1990s Virginia, like many states, lived in flush times. Our technology industry in particular was going gangbusters. The area where I live in Northern Virginia (Fairfax County) attracted some of the very best and brightest of the software industry, including companies like AOL. We also had innumerable technology companies providing services to the federal government, like SAIC and AMS. While they were raking in the profits the state got its share. This meant citizens’ tax rates could be kept about where they were. All was right: we could keep spending more without changing the sales or income tax rates. Partially as a result the Republicans took over both houses of the state legislature.

We also elected James S. Gilmore as our governor back in 1998. The Reagan-like Republican Gilmore rode into office promising to get rid of the most despised tax in Virginia: the car tax. Counties are allowed to tax personal property in our state. However, the car tax money was critical to the counties. It was used for minor things like funding the schools. Gilmore succeeded in keeping the first $20,000 of the assessed value of the car from being taxed. The state reimbursed counties for the lost revenue. And all was right until the recession started. At that point it became politically untenable for the State to stop subsidizing the counties for this lost revenue. So it became a huge new liability for the State it couldn’t politically undo.

The State became caught between the rock and a hard place. One solution could have been to reinstate the car tax. However, the voters would not stand for it. So this new state liability became politically impossible to remove. Instead the legislature invoked the usual one time accounting tricks while making cuts to transportation, education and public safety.

This year there the choices become extremely painful. The legislature now has to figure out whether it will increase taxes or cut deeply into essential state services. Will it lay off public school teachers? Make civil servants go another year without a cost of living raise, or actually reduce their salaries? (It already laid off thousands of civil servants.) Will it in effect continue to raise taxes by shifting the burden to universities, who have to make up the difference in huge tuition increases?

Former Governor Gilmore is of course appalled that his fellow Republicans would even consider raising a tax. Yes, the same governor whose reckless overspending and tax cutting got us into this situation is castigating Mark Warner for his proposal to increase taxes!

Slowly, and with the greatest reluctance the legislature is considering (gasp) tax increases. The straw that broke the camel’s back seems to have been various reports that the state’s excellent credit rating was about to take a tumble. That wouldn’t look good. It would prove our legislature was full of incompetent boobs who could not manage money. If Moody’s decides Virginia is being run by a bunch of flim flam artists, our costs of borrowing go up or maybe go away altogether. We might even end up looking like California, which is going through its own fiscal shenanigans and has already had its credit rating lowered.

I’ve been a resident of Virginia for 20 years. I was not drawn here because taxes were a bit lower than they were in Maryland. I just wanted to live in Reston. But one aspect of Virginia government I did admire somewhat was that the state had a reputation for living inside its means. It knows how to pinch a penny. But it’s clear that any waste and bloat that did exist in Virginia government is long gone. Even the silly Center for Innovative Technology, a state funded high tech consortium, has largely lost its state funding as revenues sank. But no more. Our credit rating is in jeopardy.

Virginia Republicans are raising taxes. Who would have thunk? Looking for those to absorb the tax increases, businesses have become the primary targets. I guess it’s because businesses don’t vote. The House plan calls for $520M in tax increases. The Senate plan, proposed by a much more sober State Senator John Chichister, calls for $1.8B in tax increases. Governor Warner seems to favor the Senate approach. It will be interesting to see what actually passes and even more interesting to see how the state Republicans spin their tax increases.

Meanwhile rest assured our legislature is working on things that really matter. Noting that gays are being married in truckloads in San Francisco, it is reaffirming that it will have none of that same sex gay marriage crap here in Virginia. It is also working hard to restrict abortion rights. One proposal would make it unlawful for university health clinics to provide over the counter morning-after birth control pills.

But at the same time two other curious bills are going through the legislature. HB1006 will allow companies to offer group insurance benefits to gay partners who live together. This is especially curious since we still have sodomy laws the legislature refused to repeal even though they were invalidated by a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision. In addition HB187 was passed that no longer restricts state mortgage loans only to those who are married or are blood relatives. It remains to be seen if our state senate will go along. It is also unclear why we are getting a couple progressive bills through the legislature while being obnoxiously conservative on other bills. But maybe, just maybe this is a small sign of progress. If Virginia Republicans can actually vote to raise taxes anything is now possible in my state again.

February 19th, 2004 at 09:01am Posted by Mark | Politics 2004 | no comments