Henry Co: Religious Melting Pot?

Really cool article from today's Martinsville Bulletin. Spiritual leaders from local Jewish, Christian and Muslim congregations held a public forum Monday at Patrick Henry Community College to answer questions and discuss religious pluralism. Some good quotes:

Talking about Jews considering themselves the chosen people of God, Socol said, “This chosenness does not mean we are better than other peoples but that we are obligated to lead an ethical life” to inspire others.

“We are the classic example of ‘You don’t have to be wrong for me to be right,’” she added.

...

Wolfe asserted that religious tolerance is only the beginning.

“Freedom comes and is asserted at its best when we move beyond just tolerating somebody” to learning from others, he said.

I wasn't there, so I can't speak to the overall crowd dynamic, but other than one guy who took issue with the whole concept of tolerating non-Christian beliefs, it seems to have gone quite well. This type of dialogue is very encouraging on many levels. I must confess I was not aware of this much religious diversity in my hometown. 

I don't pretend to know as much about theology as Dem Bones, but I've always gotten the impression there is more common ground than division between what these three faiths basically believe--monotheism, shared prophets such as Abraham, and the like. I think most religious violence stems from a lack of understanding, and it would do us a great service to learn more about those who see things differently. 

Anti-Tom Bias at the Franklin News-Post?

Check out this article from today's Franklin News-Post about Congressman Perriello's vote to reauthorize S-CHIP. Judging by the headline and subtitle, one would think Congressman Perriello went out of his way to raise the tobacco tax and knowingly damage the economy: 

"Perriello votes to double cigarette tax"

"Although congressman says it will likely have dramatic impact on jobs and revenues across the country."

The fact that it was actually a bill expanding health care coverage for underprivileged children is apparently not headline-worthy. Interestingly, the meat of the bill is buried toward the end of the article, including the part where Tom rips the decision to include the tax increase:

Perriello (D-Albemarle County) said he supported the reauthorization of SCHIP, but he added that he was disappointed that the Senate version included a "disproportionate increase in the excise tax rate on tobacco products."

...

"Because 99 percent of smokers make less than $250,000 a year, imposing such an onerous excise tax on tobacco will unfairly punish tobacco consumers - many who are members of the working poor - hard-working men and women living from paycheck to paycheck," Perriello said.

Tom voted for S-CHIP because it's the right thing to do. By voting for the bill, which originally did not include the tobacco tax, he was not only honoring a campaign promise, but expanding health coverage to 55,000 Virginia kids. 

This article, at least the headline and subtitle, reads like a Goode campaign press release. It's flagrantly obvious what's happening here. I wonder why the News-Post is deliberately trying to tear down Tom--is it just sour grapes? After all, they shared a street with the former congressman's offices and were in the nerve center of his fiefdom. Or, in light of a recent Martinsville Bulletin article wherein Goode takes credit for bringing defense jobs to Martinsville, does someone at the paper know something about Virgil's future political ambitions?

Ballot Access Blues

In the words of some Martinsville natives I've known for years, this just ain't right. Chris Guy at Fred2Blue posted a story on Del. Bobby Orrock (R-54) and his bill aimed at making it even harder for third-party and independent candidates to attain ballot access. Chris posted the money paragraph:

... (iii) makes it a Class 1 misdemeanor to pay or receive compensation on a fee per signature or on a basis related to the number of signatures obtained for circulating election-related petitions or completing and submitting voter registration applications;...

Chris notes that the Libertarian Party sent an e-mail to supporters, wherein it was clear they were none too thrilled.

Our ballot access laws are already a sham, not just in Virginia but in the nation as a whole. Over years of two-party dominance, the Ds and Rs have passed regulation after regulation that, taken as a whole, make it effectively impossible for any other party or candidate to compete. Granted, some version of the two parties will always dominate no matter what--that's just the nature of having to win 50% +1 vote (unless we revert to a parliament or adopt proportional representation--both about as likely as John Lennon singing at the next inauguration). 

Having said that, there's no reason smaller parties should be barred from even holding a few seats here or there. Locking out any possible form of competition is every bit as reprehensible as gerrymandering and it is every bit as destructive to our democracy. Think about it: no matter how badly either party screws up, they know that all they have to do is wait and their fortunes will eventually reverse themselves. In the last hundred years, both parties have presided over unnecessary wars, played economic roulette with the livelihoods of all Americans, spent copious amounts of monopoly money and basked in endemic corruption, and yet they remain in power. It would do both of them some good to sweat a little from time to time, and it may even help reduce the average person's cynicism and breathe new life into American politics.

You may have gathered from a recent post that I'm not a big fan of the libertarians' economic philosophy. Their unrestricted trade, let-the-market-run-rampant worldview is demonstrably harmful to the middle class, and I shudder to think of them at the reins of government. But to their credit, at least the LP is ideologically consistent--they're against government involvement in pretty much everything, including social issues like gay marriage, and they're not so sure invading everybody is such a great idea. You can make a good case that they have a more credible claim to "conservatism" than most conservatives. Heck, I'd rather run against them and have a real debate than run against these Rovian clowns who shout us down and scare people into supporting things like the Iraq War. 

A Short Apology

Sorry for not keeping things as up to date recently; I started a new job last week and my blogging habit is still getting used to the new routine. I'll try to do better this week.

Cheers,

Max

Libertarian Lunacy--Stimulus Through Inaction

Harvard Economist Jeffrey Miron posted the Libertarian stimulus plan this morning at CNN, proving unequivocally that academic econ is devil magic. This is relevant not because the Libertarian Party is suddenly going to storm the 2010 midterms and implement radical, Ron Paul-like revolution, but because their ideology has taken root in Republican circles, and it seems like a good idea to respond to this lunacy.

Miron discusses some awesome stimulus ideas that his Ouija board told him about (apparently all economics PhDs come with one). They must look brilliant to him on paper, but they completely fall apart in the real world. For instance, this nugget from the section addressing labor unions:

Laws that protect unions are problematic. Unions raise wages above market levels, increasing unemployment. 

So unions distort the wage market, but outrageous CEO compensation does not? The executive class can demand exorbitant compensation and benefits, but American workers should shut up and accept the market wage for their work? This is patently absurd--think about who defines the "market wage" in each case. An employer offers a job for a certain salary and the prospect either accepts or asks for more--it's just that for a CEO, the "employer" is the shareholders. The only difference between what unions do and what CEOs do is that executives are asking for things they don't need to support their families or do their jobs. The irony is that the anti-union sentiment is inconsistent with free-market ideology--the union is a market force and it is therefore setting the market rate for wages, completely independent of government intervention. It is true that unions sometimes make mistakes and overreach, but until corporate tax codes change in favor of middle-class workers, unions are the best chance we have for working Americans to make a better wage.

Miron also advocates increased carbon taxes to combat congestion and global warming. I can't fault him for his motives here, it's actually pretty commendable from the standpoint of wanting to lower emissions. But I've blogged before about how disastrous a national gasoline tax would be for small town, middle-class workers who have to commute in order to work. It would disproportionately affect areas like Southside, where there is no public transit to rely on and commuting is the norm.

But here's the most outlandish part of Miron's stimulus:

The Obama fiscal stimulus risks reviving this insanity, since both the House and Senate bills require that certain stimulus-funded projects use U.S. equipment and goods. The administration should oppose these provisions. More generally, President Obama and his economic advisors should state -- no, scream -- that America is unambiguously committed to free trade.

Let's see, we're in a near-depression in large part because millions of Americans no longer have a job. Therefore, the solution is to completely embrace "free" trade and allow even more manufacturing jobs to hemorrhage overseas? I agree that we can't put up a wall around our country and expect it to work out well--the world economy and the American economy are inextricably linked in a major way. But by the same token, if the U.S. economy collapses because everyone's out of work, the rest of the world will suffer and we won't buy foreign goods. We may not be able to go completely protectionist, but we can set standards for who we trade with--namely that potential trade partners meet environmental and labor standards at least on par with our own. And yes, Prof. Miron, that means encouraging union organizing in foreign countries, because if the market wage is equally "distorted" everywhere, there is less incentive to ship American jobs overseas.

There's plenty more where that came from.

Look, I'm not saying Prof. Miron is a bad guy or that he doesn't know his stuff. Clearly he's a very intelligent man, or he wouldn't be a Harvard PhD. But the problem with guys like him is that they live in the world of theory--everything is an abstraction that makes academic sense, but has little to no basis in reality for everyday Americans. They see everything through that lens, and the scary part is that they often end up having pull in the halls of power. Let's hope our elected officials have better sense than to let this sort of approach govern policymaking--if this guy has his way, we're in for a much longer and deeper depression than we have right now.

Danny Marshall Gets an Opponent

From the Danville Register & Bee this evening:

Former Danville Mayor F. Seward Anderson has announced plans to challenge Delegate Danny Marshall, R-Danville, this year for his House seat in the General Assembly.

Anderson, a Democrat, said he mailed his papers Monday to the state Board of Elections to declare his candidacy. He also has filed papers with the city registrar.

“My focus will be job growth, education, transportation and working as hard as possible to obtain more funding from the Governor’s Opportunity Fund,” Anderson said Tuesday.

Anderson, a financial advisor with Wachovia Securities, served on Danville City Council from 1982 to 1996, including 10 years as mayor.

Marshall having an opponent should definitely be interesting. To be honest, I don't know enough about Anderson to have an opinion just yet, but I definitely think Marshall is beatable. What do you think of the former mayor?

GOP: All Spending is Bad Spending

I found this on CNN earlier and thought it was pretty interesting. It's a list of things the Republican senate leadership objects to in the current stimulus bill. According to the GOP, all the things on this list are hunks of pork that should have no place in the stimulus, and in fairness, some of these things are pretty worthless--note the $246 million to buy film for Hollywood motion pictures and $248 million for furniture at Homeland Security.

Don't get me wrong, the stimulus isn't perfect. But when they start nitpicking over things like energy efficiency and canal inspection, they're showing the kneejerk ideological groupthink that threaten to derail the whole stimulus plan. The all-spending-is-bad-spending approach is pretty toxic in an economy as bad as this one, where there basically is no choice but to act. Curiously this mindset didn't seem to have as much weight when it was Wall Street who needed a bailout.

And as for this controversy about the $400 million for STD prevention, I have one question: why is this such anathema to the Republicans? It seems to me that if you want to 1) lower health care costs by preventing STDs, 2) promote public health and safety and 3) reduce the abortion rate, this item should be a no-brainer. I guess running to that old standby the culture war is one way to stir up opposition to the stimulus, but wow.

McDonnell to Step Down

Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell announced today that he's stepping down as Attorney General to focus on running a full-time campaign for governor. This is not an uncommon practice among past AGs who have run for governor. I've embedded the YouTube clip of his full announcement.

It's interesting that he's trying to take such a bipartisan tack--it's as if he's taking a page from the Mark Warner playbook. In the same breath that he talks about values and the Boy Scout Jamboree, he also talks up the environment and protecting the waterways. Apparently Bob's campaign doesn't think moving right is necessarily an awesome idea.

Bobby's moderation, at least in terms of rhetoric, brings up an important question: what will the hardliners say? Specifically, it will be interesting to see how J-Fred responds. Will there be a battle of egos? Will Virginia's 2009 race become a microcosm of the national party's principles-versus-sanity debate? It would make for good political theater.

Deeds' Redistricting Bill Gets Unanimous Senate Support

The Star City Harbinger has a good snippet today about Creigh Deeds' perennial fight to rationalize Virginia's redistricting system:

For the last seven years, State Senator Creigh Deeds has gone to bat for a non-partisan redistricting proposal; today’s unanimous vote in the Virginia State Senate makes it three consecutive years that proposal has received support from a bi-partisan coalition in the Virginia Senate [See: Richmond Sunlight, SB 926, 2009].

It isn’t sexy.  It isn’t soundbite worthy. But it is the key to ensuring political competition and bipartisanship in a state government nearly paralyzed with gridlock.  Deeds says,

“This important reform can change the way we do business in state government by putting an end to the bitter partisanship that keeps us from moving Virginia forward. With the next redistricting just around the corner, my proposal ensures that the electorate chooses their elected leaders; not the other way around.”

The operative word here is non-partisan. A good example of how this might work would be districting by a panel of retired judges--since they spent their careers striving for neutrality and no longer have a stake in the system, they should be pretty fair and impartial. Hopefully this would produce as many competitive districts as possible, as opposed to bipartisan redistricting, which only produces equal numbers of safe districts through wheeling and dealing.

This may be a case where Deeds' Senate seat could pay dividends, and based on the fact that his campaign issued a press release about it, they seem to be hoping so. If it manages to pass the House (a big "if" given the potential for GOP stonewalling--there's a reason he's tried this seven times) Creigh can point to this as a concrete achievement while his opponents are gallivanting about the state. Of course, it will get no media play, and the average voter won't care. The only people who are paying attention are partisan primary voters--many of whom may not be thrilled about nonpartisan districting, given the current balance in our House delegation.

But having said that, I really have to applaud Sen. Deeds for consistently pushing for this badly-needed reform. Gerrymandering is a disgrace to democracy no matter which side practices it, and as Deeds says, the people should pick their representatives--not the other way around.

Congrats to the Steelers

Great game last night. I've always had a soft spot for the Steelers, and I'm glad to see it. Though I admit I was sweating the Cardinals toward the end--James Farrior and Heath Miller being U.Va. guys, I worried their bad karma might rub off on the Steelers, and they nearly pulled a Wahoowa and collapsed right after the first half. Being a Wahoo myself, I've seen it happen more times than I care to remember, but thankfully, it seems the Scott Stadium curse was broken in time to spare me more athletic devastation.