Changing the rules in Haiti.

Virginia to Gays: Get Out of the State
The Senate passed by a veto proof margin a bill prohibiting same sex unions in Virginia and the recognition of those performed in other states. Right wing nut case Bob Marshall (R-Prince William) proposed the bill. Compatriot in bigotry, Sen. Kenneth Cuccinelli(R-Fairfax), said the legislation would prevent court challenges, but others say the bill is so broadly written it wouldn’t stand up in court.

The Assembly has already approved a resolution supporting a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, and a bill allowing companies to offer benefits to same sex couples was killed earlier this year.

“Virginia has a long history . . . of standing in the door,” Sen. Richard L. Saslaw, D-Fairfax, said, referring to the state’s earlier ban on interracial marriage. “We’re telling these people who happen to be gay, essentially, ‘stay out of Virginia.’”

Sen. Janet Howell (D-Fairfax) was concerned about the impact on businesses that would be reluctant to come to the state.

Find the vote here. Among those voting for the ban was the supposedly moderate Sen. Jeannemarie Devolites (R-Fairfax), who is proving to be anything but this session. She also sided with the right on the Senate’s budget plan.

The Washington Post’s Marc Fisher has a column this morning.

What If?
Michael Hardy And Jeff E. Schapiro of the Richmond Times-Dispatch – for my money, the best two reporters on the General Assembly beat – have a good summary of the politics of the budget process and the options if a deal isn’t reached by Friday.

House GOP Moderates Intimidated
Several House GOP moderates felt intimidated by Speaker Bill Howell yesterday when he barged into their meeting.

“Get Tough, But Not on Us”
Virginia is tough on crime, right? Former Gov. George Allen built prisons and abolished parole. Legislators love mandatory sentences. Well, except when they’re the perpetrators. A bill that would set mandatory sentencing guidelines for public officials caught embezzling was stymied in the Assembly. And they didn’t have the guts to record a vote. They did it on a voice vote.

“We may be going a little too far to try and help out with a very serious problem,” said Del. Morgan Griffith (R-Salem).

God forbid we should go too far in punishing crooked lawmakers.

Is the House Budget Real?
Little happened in Richmond yesterday, as budget conferees exchanged letters and lamented that they were miles apart. A special session seems more likely, according to many reports.

But among the “no news is bad news” stories, there is this nugget: The House seems ready to admit that its budget isn’t based on good numbers. Here’s how The Washington Post put it:

The amount that plan would raise is in dispute. The House has estimated it would bring in $522 million, which would be divided between the state and local governments. But that number is in dispute: Fiscal analysts have said that the plan could bring in far less, which if true means that the House’s budget isn’t balanced, which the state constitution mandates.

House negotiators gave a written offer to the Senate on Tuesday. It stated that they would be willing to discuss additional ways to ensure that the state receives the amount it must have to balance the House budget.

Although the offer did not specify which additional taxes the House might be willing to consider, negotiators said in interviews that they might consider eliminating additional business tax breaks or an increase to the cigarette tax.

The Hampton Roads Daily Press says instead of over $500 million the House originally claimed to be raised through the elimination of sales tax breaks for business, the real number may be closer to $335 million, according to calculations by the Department of Taxation. But, says the Daily Press article:

Chichester said he remained wary of balancing the budget on money generated by erasing sales tax breaks for businesses, which is a cornerstone of the House plan. He said there is no solid way to determine how much money can be generated. State tax officials have said their own estimates are tentative on the current House proposal, which erases sales tax breaks for a variety of businesses, from power companies to contractors.

There is also disagreement about how much money the House plan raises for K-12 education. The Washington Post has twice published charts showing more than $800 million in additional funding. But the Senate Finance Committee says there’s actually a $1 million cut in the House plan.

Meanwhile, Governor Warner suddenly raises the issue of tax fairness:

“… The debate here inside the Capitol has focused too much on dollars raised and too little on tax fairness. Together with our obligation to meet the state’s long-term commitments in a fiscally responsible manner, tax reform has been, and must continue to be, an important goal for this session,” he wrote in a letter to Chichester and Callahan before both sides began their separate meetings.

The Virginia Organizing Project has been trying to get anyone to listen to its proposal that was true tax fairness, but neither the Governor’s office, the two houses or the press seemed to care much for it.

Meanwhile, local jurisdictions around the state brought their voices together to generate a number of stories about the local impacts on services and local taxes caused by Virginia’s penuriousness:
Northern Virginia Journal
Richmond Times Dispatch
Virginian Pilot
Danville Register & Bee
Winchester Star

Bristol Mayor sums it up: “This is not a question of whether taxes are going to be raised this year. It’s a question of who’s going to have to raise them.”

General Assembly Spares Kermit the Frog
A bill passed the Senate that allows students to study computer models of frogs rather than dissect them. Which makes Virginia follow California’s lead. That’s scary. From the Virginian Pilot.:

“We are on our way to becoming a nation of wimps,” said Senate Minority Leader Richard L. Saslaw. “It’s just a frog, for crying out loud.”

Saslaw, a Democrat from Fairfax County, said the bill was a bad case of political correctness. But, he acknowledged, “I’m probably going to get a call from Kermit.”

Poynter Online, the daily blog from the journalism school Poynter Institute, alerts readers to an interesting article posted at Slate online yesterday. Editor-at-large Jack Shafer muses about The Washington Post’s new guidelines on the use of anonymous sources.

I think newspapers sometimes unwittingly becomes the White House’s outside public relations mouthpieces when they carry stories of dubious news value. I recall once when a Post front page story announced that the White House was going to launch a PR campaign about something or other. Having pitched stories myself, it’s quite a coup to get any publication to announce not only what your PR campaign is about, but the mere fact that you have a campaign.

But Shafer’s story is more about how newspapers play into the administration’s hands by thinking every anonymous source must be offering a good story. He writes:

…what would be lost if the Post and the [New York] Times turned their backs on [the White House’s] worthless background briefings and stopped barking like terriers for table scraps from administration officials? Not to disparage the fine work of Post and Times reporters, but how great a tragedy would it be if they gave the official agenda a bye and stopped reporting the incremental changes in White House policy that pass for news?

Recall yesterday I posted a link to another blog about reporters always calling the “usual suspects,” those pundits who are quick-tongued and always available. Are reporters missing something when they don’t look beyond the well-known and well-worn spinmeisters? Shafer continues:

For one thing, it would free up staff to cultivate sources outside the corridors of power. There’s plenty of news to be gotten further down the pecking order, as Michael Massing explains in his recent New York Review of Books feature “Now They Tell Us.” http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16922 Massing found that the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau, which relied on “blue collar” sources to report the prewar WMD threat rather than high-level ones, captured a more accurate picture of Iraq’s capabilities than did the New York Times’ Judith Miller, who had numerous high sources feeding her.

Another interesting idea Shafer discusses: reporters saying “this is true” (or isn’t) instead of just giving us a “he said, she said” regurgitation:

Perhaps the Wall Street Journal, an extremely accurate newspaper, points the way out of this morass. The Journal relies on confidential sources, of course, but it also allows its reporters more latitude in asserting what they know to be true. The paper encourages reporters to incorporate analysis into their reporting rather than compose a stenographic procession of facts, quotations, and official denials, allowing it in many cases to get closer to the truth than its rivals.

Shafer asks readers to watch closely to see if The Post and the New York Times adhere to their stricter policies on anonymous sources. If you find the papers caving in, write to pressbox@hotmail.com. Slate says “E-mail may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.”

Callahan Digs In His Heels
House Appropriations Committee chair Del. Vincent F. Callahan Jr. (R-Fairfax) said that general sales and income tax increases will not be in the compromise budget, drawing a sharp line in the sand.

Callahan, as I’ve pointed out several times the past few weeks, is usually a reasonable guy. He needs to hear from everyone in the state, and especially his constituents and contributors to his campaigns.

Get his contact info here. For the names of his campaign donors and amounts given, click here.

Rally Draws Shills
Anti-taxers held a rally yesterday in Richmond. One hundred-fifty people were there, as opposed to 700-800 who attended a rally supporting the Governor’s budget earlier this Assembly session. Here’s what the Richmond Times-Dispatch wrote: “Filling out the crowd were aides to GOP legislators as well as lawyers from the office of Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore, the party’s likely candidate for governor next year. Kilgore again urged a referendum on higher taxes.”

Your tax dollars at work – getting staff to attend a supposedly grassroots rally.

A small group opposing the referendum idea was also at the rally, prompting a referendum supporter to say, “We were here first. They’re distracting. They’re trouble. Get out of here. Get away, go.”

“We were here first”? Some folks need to learn to play nice in the sandbox.

Poll Shows Support for Tax Increases
AARP claims a poll it conducted found 70% of Virginians “opposed reducing state spending in general and specifically opposed cuts to education and health care,” according to a Virginian Pilot story. “Three-fourths of respondents supported higher taxes on cigarettes and corporations, and more than half supported raising income and sales taxes.”

Local governments also seem to support higher state taxes. The Prince George County supervisors asked the General Assembly to “adjust” taxes to provide more funds for schools and other local needs. Two Republicans led the way. Other local governments chiming in: The Isle of Wight supervisors officially berated local legislators who signed a no-tax pledge. “The Isle of Wight School Board and the Isle of Wight, Smithfield and Windsor Chamber of Commerce joined the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, the Hampton Roads and Peninsula chambers and the Virginia Association of Counties in criticizing these lawmakers.” Frederick County passed a resolution “urging the General Assembly to rework its tax plan.”

Meanwhile, even conservative House negotiators have seemingly embraced the Governor’s budget amount. Speaking of the idea of eliminating some sales tax breaks for businesses, Del. Phillip A. Hamilton (R-Newport News), said, “This is a way to get us closer to what the governor had.”

This true?
Christina Bellantoni, writing for the Washington Times, states: “[Budget negotiators] must come up with a compromise between the House’s $58 billion budget that meets the state’s basic needs with no general tax increase and the Senate’s $61.5 billion budget that gives more funding to all state services by raising taxes.”

All state services are going to increase? All? I wonder if there are not some services that are going to be cut.

Cheaters Beware
The General Assembly has decided to leave Virginia’s anti-sodomy law as is, awaiting a certain challenge to its prohibition on private sodomy acts, a clause that could be used to prosecute homosexuals.

But the bill also leaves on the books the “anti-fornication” Class 3 misdemeanor that prohibits cohabitation and private “lewd and lascivious behavior between unmarried adults.”

Cohabitation and sex between unmarried adults? Yes, Virginia, there is a Virginia.

$2 Million for Advertising; How Much for Schools?
A bill sure to be signed by the Governor allows Fairfax County to raise its hotel tax 2%, raising almost $7 million. Two million dollars must go for tourism marketing. But don’t count on the other $5 million to go for other needs. The county supervisors are thinking of using the savings to reduce property taxes.

…often means working at Wal-Mart.

The second richest man in the U.S. doesn’t think much of perks of wealthy folks. Today’s CNN Money quotes his letter to shareholders. He goes after Bush on tax cuts, including those for corporations, excessive CEO pay, “lapdog” boards of directors and mutual fund managers.

Maybe Warren’s the guy to fund his own 527 organization to beat Bush.

At Tim Porter’s blog he summarizes and supplements a Columbia Journalism Review post about reporters who call the usual suspects for quotes they know they’ll get, not for new insight.

“….reporters in general and political reporters in particular are facing the wrong direction: Toward the public figures and politicians instead of toward the public and the community.”

Anybody know where a guy can get a reliable biographical dictionary with the names of ALL the folks who wrote the great Tin Pan Alley songs? I received a book last Christmas called American Songwriters by David Ewen. It’s thorough in the biographies of the composers listed but limited to only the best known. I’d like something more complete. Email me.

I wrote last month about the habit of The Washington Post to put stories about Israelis killed in suicide attacks on the front page, while Palestinian deaths at the hands of the Israeli army are buried inside the paper. It happens again today. Fourteen Palestinians, including three children, were killed during an operation initiated by the Israelis. The story is on page A11.

In a response to my post last month, The Post’s ombudsman Michael Getler said what makes the front page is dependent on many factors, including the day’s major stories. That’s fair. Apparently today, more important than these 14 deaths were a story about the “car culture” catching on in China, a follow-up story to the Baltimore water taxi accident and another of what some think are The Post’s attempts to hype a book by one of its reporters.

Meanwhile, reporter Molly Moore describes the Israeli action with words such as:

“… one of the most deadly encounters in months in the Gaza Strip, where combat has intensified…”

“The ferocity of the fighters’ assault underscored a trend of increasingly organized and sophisticated tactics against Israeli troops and improved cooperation among militant organizations in the Gaza Strip….”

“Palestinian officials said they believed the militant organizations were combining and refining their resistance….”

So there seems ample evidence that this deadly attack is part of a larger trend story, which might warrant front page treatment, especially given the number of deaths and the fact that children were also killed.

Let’s see where the next suicide attack story is placed.