I Met Jody Wagner Tonight

Jody Wagner's campaign came to the Ryan's Steakhouse in Martinsville this evening, and I got a chance to spend about an hour chatting with Jody and her campaign staffers. As of right now, I am not endorsing any of the LG candidates--I will probably roll out some endorsements at some point, but I want to hold off until I have more information about all of them.

Having said that, I found Jody to be an impressive candidate. She's knowledgeable, personable, well-spoken and engaged. Jim White over at What is Right for Virginia has a good post about the event, along with a dashing photograph of myself...well, "dashing" may be a strong word. 

In any case, I echo what Jim said: thanks for taking the time to sit down with us, Jody, and a special thanks for navigating Martinsville traffic on NASCAR race weekend.

Blue Commonwealth Melts Down

Apparently circular firing squads are a bipartisan phenomenon:

http://www.bluecommonwealth.com/node/7121

Huh. So there's that. Backbiting and lack of civility can doom blogs.

Update: BC apparently may have a future.

Uranium Roundup: Study Proposal, Deeds on Mining, etc

After an insanely busy week that kept me from posting much of anything, here's The Uranium Roundup, second edition. Lots to talk about this week:

• The top story comes from Wednesday, when the Subcommittee on Uranium Mining released its tentative draft of the proposed uranium mining study objectives. The list of items to be looked at in the study is too long to list here, but most of the concerns center around health and safety, environmental/ecosystem effects, and long-term economic sustainability.  The study will take around two years and cost around $1 million. My big question: who pays for it? 
• State Sen. Creigh Deeds has come out publicly saying that he doubts the science behind the proposed uranium mining study. This comes after Terry McAuliffe bunted on the issue early last week.
• The Danville Register-Bee published an editorial that raises a very good point about one of the study questions--how reliable is the market demand for uranium? A sudden drop in demand for played a big part in killing the first proposed uranium mine at Coles Hill back in the 1980s. If demand for uranium is unstable, it may not be smart to tie Pittsylvania's economy to such a volatile industry. (h/t Dem Bones)
• Virginia Uranium has hired a lobbying firm called Kemper Consulting. This development got a passing mention in an editorial in today's Virginian-Pilot out of Hampton Roads. Apparently Kemper also represents the city of Norfolk as well as an Illinois company looking to run port operations in Virginia if the state privatizes the ports, prompting conflict-of-interest concerns. Other than that, I honestly don't know anything else about Kemper.

That about does it for this week. With two of the four gubernatorial candidates having to answer uranium questions in the past week, it definitely looks like this thing is quickly becoming an election issue. Given that the study is slated to take quite a while, I wouldn't be surprised to see it turn up in 2010 as well. 

How Do They Not Get This?

Apparently the great minds over at JPMorgan haven't quite figured out the American mood as it pertains to everything outside of one street in New York City. This golden nugget from ABC News yesterday makes it into my new "How Do They Not Get This?" segment. 

JPMorgan thinks it'd just be a swell idea to go ahead and drop $138 million in mad fliff on some new corporate jets and a special hangar. Don't worry though, they're doing this thing the green way: it comes with a roof garden! Yes, that's right--JPMorgan is being awarded this lease from the state of New York because they've pledged to make the hangar a state-of-the-art "green building." Huh. So in order to save the environment, they're going to purchase a fleet of private jets that will eventually belch much more carbon than a passenger jet--I guess they can't be seen among the unwashed. Can anyone say greenwashing?

The article says that they're not using any of the $25 billion in TARP money to pay for their new toys. That's like saying, "It's OK honey, I didn't use any of your money to pay for my trip to Vegas with your sorority sister!" And now, at the end of the article, behold the money-est of all quotes I've seen this week, from none other than JPMorgan chair Jamie Dimon. Jamie, drop it like it's hot:

"When I hear the constant vilification of corporate America I personally don't understand it," Dimon said.

Well, he's right about that--clearly he hasn't poked his head out of that little financial bubble for quite some time. I would like to turn his question on his head and ask why AIG, JPMorgan and others don't understand basic fairness. How do they not get this? We were already struggling and had to spend our tax dollars to save these guys from their own incompetence, and they repay us by writing themselves massive bonuses and buying new jets. As President Obama said on 60 minutes, these guys need to spend a little time outside of New York. 

But I think the best way to describe this move comes from Nell Minow, a corporate watchdog quoted in the article:

"There are going to be business school case studies for generations about exactly these decisions, and people will be learning forever about what incredible stupidity these executives showed," said Minow.

Look, don't get me wrong. I think capitalism is the best system ever devised for the exchange of goods and services. With enough hard work, smart moves and some luck, a high school dropout can become a self-made millionaire. But like democracy, the whole thing can collapse in the blink of an eye when there's too much power in too few hands. Our founders understood that pure democracy is nothing more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner, and so we got a republic. In the same way, we have allowed the balance of power in our economy to shift into the hands of people like Dimon, who have become so insulated from reality that they've lost their grip on it.

McAuliffe on Uranium

Interesting tidbit over at Dem Bones today. Terry McAuliffe's (non-) stance on uranium mining in the Southside:

From the Danville Register and Bee:

Democrat Terry McAuliffe wouldn’t say whether he’d back uranium mining in Virginia as he expanded what he calls his business plan for the state.

... McAuliffe said he’d await the results of a study on health and environmental effects of the proposed mine near Chatham.

When asked whether Virginia Uranium Inc., which stands to make billions from mining, should pay for the study, McAuliffe had no objection to it.

He effectively punted here, but I haven't heard Moran or Deeds on the issue.

So there ya go. Yes, he completely dodged it, but so far McAuliffe's the only candidate I've heard talking about uranium mining at all. Bold prediction: he won't be the last.

Teen Pregnancy Skyrockets

Disturbing article from the Martinsville Bulletin today. Growing up here, I've always known our teen pregnancies were completely out of control--in high school, I think at any given time there were five pregnant teenagers walking the halls, and it was not at all uncommon to see 16-year-olds bringing their new babies to school for a tour, meeting faculty and friends. I even remember at least one girl becoming a mother in seventh grade.

But these numbers are pretty striking--they come out to about 70 per 1,000 in the city of Martinsville and about 41 per 1,000 in the county. It may not sound like much, but it's more than twice the state average; Martinsville's teen pregnancy rate is the second-highest in the state (curiously the same rank as our unemployment, which reached 18% last month). 

What's so daunting about this issue is how insidious it is. It's not like pregnant teens have a rough 9 months and then everything's back to normal--they're parents for the rest of their lives. The way I see it, there's a two-pronged approach to this problem: the first is damage control. We should call on our local churches to offer day care programs either for free or at a very low rate while their mothers are at school receiving the kind of specialized attention discussed in the article--the worst thing we can do is allow the countless teen mothers in our town to drop out of high school and be stuck in a life of poverty. 

Second, we have to prevent as many future unplanned pregnancies as possible. This is where the biggest controversies will arise--I can easily see an epic fight over access to contraceptives or education vs. abstinence-only. I will stop writing about it here, because I fear I'm opening a can of worms. But I think we all agree we have to do something about this problem.

The Perriello Report, or, Double Shift Part Deux

Tom Perriello has done two very noteworthy things this week, one involving AIG and the other having to do with the benefits of national service and volunteerism. 

First, Tom issued a richly-deserved verbal smackdown to the AIG tools who decided they still deserved multi-million dollar bonuses even after completely failing at that whole capitalism thing and shamelessly taking a bailout from the federal money-for-incompetence program. He also co-sponsored a bill to re-take all bonuses over $100,000 that AIG execs have awarded themselves. Given the emerging conservative talking point that actually defends the AIG bonuses based on the "they're just honoring a prior contract" argument, I think this is a pretty excellent quote:

“AIG hides behind claims of contractual obligations, but the car companies who received bailout funds found a way to cut wages to line workers. Why is it okay for companies to force cuts on workers but not scale back million dollar bonuses for the executives who knowingly caused us this mess?”

Someone give that man a chairmanship.

Tom also led the charge to create a national volunteer reserve corps that would enlist former volunteers for future efforts in times of national disasters. The GIVE Act, which is expected to raise the number of available volunteers to 250,000, passed the House overwhelmingly today. The bill is supposed to make it easier for Americans to volunteer their time on projects to improve our communities; U.Va. politics professor Larry Sabato has proposed something like this before, noting what a great advantage a reserve corps could have provided in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and other disasters. Here's a YouTube clip of Tom speaking about the bill:

There will also be financial incentives--higher ed funding and the like--to encourage additional volunteerism. This would work great for someone like myself; It would have been much easier to afford a trip to the Gulf to rebuild houses had I known I could help pay my college bills in the process.

Coach Leitao "Resigns"

Any of you who follow college basketball in the state have no doubt heard by now that Virginia coach Dave Leitao has resigned/been bought out for $2.1 million. I'm actually not sure how I feel about this--yes, I've been very frustrated with my Wahoos this season and I want to have a winning team, but they really haven't done any worse than expected. I do think he needed to go at some point, but I don't necessarily believe it's fair to place all the blame on Leitao, since having an incredibly young team and one of the toughest schedules in the ACC is grounds for benefit-of-the-doubt. I'm also inclined to have much more patience with Leitao than with certain members of the coaching staff over at Scott Stadium. Nevertheless, I do see this as the business decision it is--the fan base was gathering torches and pitchforks over the mediocre football seasons, and if you can't sell out your new multimillion-dollar arena for ACC matchups, you have to do something to calm the masses and regain the trust of the audience.

For better or worse, so long, Dave. Any thoughts on who might replace him?

New Section: Uranium Roundup

Given the constant stream of news surrounding Virginia Uranium Institute's proposed uranium mine in Pittsylvania County, I'm planning to start a weekly (or thereabouts) installment of uranium-related headlines to keep up with the relevant occurrences. 

For those of you who are new to this blog, I've written before about my opposition to uranium mining and the conflicts of interest on the subcommittee tasked with "studying" such mining. It's become apparent that if I tried to write a post every time something happened, I'd never write about anything else and you would all get bored. Instead, here's some of what happened on the uranium front over the past week or so:

• Last week, the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors brought up the possibility of enacting a uranium mining ban within the county. This comes after a previous resolution, which required any uranium mining not result in damage to the county, passed unanimously. I don't have to tell you what a potentially huge deal this could be; legal battles anyone?
  
• The Danville Register & Bee has--sort of--come out on the side of Chatham Mayor George Haley, who wants his town to adopt a less ambiguous ordinance--pro or con--regarding VUI's proposed mine at the Coles Hill site. Gretna and Hurt have already passed ordinances requiring the mine not bring harm to Pittsylvania County, which seems to reflect the general public opinion.
• The Pittsylvania County NAACP has expressed concerns about how mining would affect water quality in the county. Apparently the exploratory drilling that occurred in recent months has led to a drastic increase in lead levels at at least one household's water well.
• The Southside Virginia Against Uranium Mining blog (which is worth a look in its own right) posted a map today of land leased to would-be miners Marline Properties in the 1980s before the statewide moratorium on uranium was enacted. It may take a while to load the picture, but I think it's worth a look; major swaths of land were slated for uranium mining, and it would be interesting to see what role the old leases would play in any new mining.

It would seem there's a growing public consciousness of what dangers are inherent in blasting radioactive nuclear fuel out of the ground and into the environment. I would expect that to grow into a backlash over the coming months, and it encourages me--one of the most cruel things you can do to a Southside resident is promise jobs in exchange for health and safety.

Double Shift

Congressman Perriello is back at work, where he has joined with over forty congressmen from both sides of the aisle to request that President Obama form an Office of Rural Policy. This follows the president's plan to form an Office of Urban Policy last week. Check out this article; it goes into more detail about the breadth of this coalition, which draws on rural districts from across the country.

This is what Tom was talking about on the campaign trail when he spoke in bipartisan, solutions-oriented tones. Contrary to popular belief, there actually are things we can discuss and address other than the big hot-buttons--call me naive if you want, but I'm encouraged when I see news like this. I think it shows that bipartisanship can work. 

This is also good news because of the obvious fact that rural areas face many of the same issues as more developed areas of the country, but often get overlooked--poverty, lack of educational opportunity, crumbling infrastructure, rampant social problems like drug addiction and teen pregnancy are some of the problems that face the 5th District alone. 

Go Tom!