Laurie Thomas doesn’t like asking for handouts.

But Thomas, a recent graduate of the Virginia School of Technology, has had trouble finding employment as a certified medical assistant. She has epilepsy and said employers have been unwilling to hire her. Her boyfriend has a good job as a plumber’s assistant, but his salary alone isn’t enough, she said. Unemployed and with a family to feed, Thomas decided last week to apply for food stamps.

“I didn’t have a choice,” she said. “Right now, I’m just trying to figure out what bills need to be paid first and how I’m going to pay them.”

Thomas is among an increasing number of Virginians who are turning to food stamps to get by. Statewide, nearly 486,000 people received food stamp benefits last year, a 41 percent increase since 2001.

The picture was similar nationally, with nearly 24 million Americans on food stamps in 2004 – almost one-third more than four years ago. In South Hampton Roads, Virginia Beach saw the most dramatic increase. Last year, 16,781 residents received food stamps – a 45 percent jump from 2001.

“We’re hoping that this trend is about to end,” said Earl Ford, an official with the city’s Human Services Department.

Part of the spike can be attributed to welfare reform in the 1990s, which attached time limits to government assistance. Since then, officials have made a more diligent effort to enroll people who qualify for food stamps.

Still, much of the increase was fueled by rising poverty rates, compounded by an abundance of low-wage jobs with few or no benefits. Often, low- to middle-class workers are finding second or third jobs to help pay for rent and food.

More of Susan White’s story here.

Last year, reports said Del. Ben Cline (R-Amherst) was chastened by an outpouring of support at public hearings for tax increases. Still, this year, he’s pandering to the anti-tax crowd.

“Last year, we passed a record tax increase in order to fund an increase in government spending by 15 percent in a single year. A lot of folks, me included, are concerned to see that level of government expansion,” Cline said.

“We also recognize that the surplus that this has helped create, and we’re talking about a surplus that is in the area of $1 billion and counting, doesn’t need to go back into increasing spending even further,” Cline said.

“We need to recognize those individuals and businesses who have created the surplus that we’re now seeing in the first place. The taxpayers of Virginia, the hard-working men and women of Virginia, are the reason that this surplus even exists,” Cline said.

“They’re the ones who should be enjoying it. Not the government bureaucracy,” Cline said.

He must be spending a lot of time at the gas pumps or pumping Slurpees, given what he said about the public meetings last year: “I have to balance what I hear tonight with what I hear every day at the gas station, the convenience store and on Main Street.”

Cline is a freshman, I believe, obviously planning to run on the platform that the tax hikes were a bad idea. Let’s hope the folks back in his district point out what those tax hikes paid for.

What does Virginia have in common with Iran, Somalia and Sudan?
They all allow executions for crimes committed by juveniles.
Legislation submitted this year by Del. Vincent Callahan, R-McLean, and Sen. Patricia Ticer, D-Alexandria, would remove Virginia from that list by saying that juveniles who murder someone cannot be sentenced to death for their crimes.
“There’s something fundamentally wrong with a society that executes children,” Callahan said.

So it seems Vince Callahan, who until he sided with the anti-taxers for most of last year was considered a more moderate GOPer, seems to have come home a bit. Let’s hope he can bring some of his Republican brethren along.

[Jack Payden-Travers, director of Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty] said that Virginia has executed 21 juvenile offenders since 1787. Of those, 19 were black.
Only six states, including Virginia, still allow people to be executed for crimes committed when they were juveniles, Payden-Travers said. Virginia is second only to Texas in the number of juveniles it has executed.

“The same folks who are criticizing the strong revenue growth also support new revenues for transportation,” [Governor Warner’s press spokeswoman Ellen] Qualls said. “Which is it: Do we have significant unmet transportation needs, or do we have too much revenue?”

No surprise, I guess, since he can’t raise money while the Assembly is in session. And after last year, who would want to take that chance! And the Assembly gets to name his interim successor.

“This is awfully early to be leaving,” Sabato said.

“This is an insane tradition almost unknown elsewhere around the country. There’s no need for a sitting attorney general to resign. We’ve invented a problem that doesn’t exist,” he said.

Much is made over the fundraising advantage he’ll have since Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine can’t raise match his fundraising efforts. But as much as both of these guys will likely raise, there comes a point of diminishing returns. A lot of money can only bring you so far.

A couple of years ago, had you said the Dems would out fundraise the GOP in the presidential campaign, you would have predicted a Dem win. But money didn’t win it for George. Smarts did, although they obviously aren’t his smarts.

I can always count on losing a couple of days of work when I buy a new computer. Which is why my old one was over six years old. Things are almost 100% normal. We’ll see.

May not be posting today due to installation of new computer. Be back soon. (You know how that goes.)

“I thought I’d seen it all in 25 years of working with the General Assembly. We’ve seen numerous bills in recent years that would impact women’s access to contraception, unfortunately,” said Ben Greenberg, chief lobbyist for Planned Parenthood of Virginia. “This bill is probably just the latest and perhaps the most threatening and extreme of examples of legislation that would do that.”

What he’s talking about is HB1918, which would decree that life begins at fertilization, introduced by Mark Cole (R-Frederickburg).

Greenberg said a number of popular birth control methods–the Pill, Depo Provera, the morning-after pill–all can potentially act after fertilization has occurred. Cole’s bill could prevent access to all those types of birth control.

“The only thing that would be available on the market, if these methods of contraception were made illegal, would be the barrier methods,” Greenberg said. “Condom manufacturers should be very excited by this legislation.”

Greenberg said the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1972 that couples do have the right to access birth control.

However, that hasn’t stopped some lawmakers–in Virginia and elsewhere–from trying to blur the line between abortion and contraception, Greenberg said.

For that reason, there is a bill in the U.S. Senate right now that would define what is contraception and clarify that it is not abortion.

“People have a hard time believing that our General Assembly could be hostile to birth control,” Greenberg said. “But this is another example of that fact. Hostility toward abortion has been documented for many years. The hostility toward birth control is of more recent vintage, and is evidenced by bills over the past three to four years, this being just the latest and most threatening example of them. It seem to me the women of Virginia should be outraged by this.”

Cole’s bill has been referred to the House Privileges and Elections Committee, which is not the usual repository of bills relating to reproduction. However, Cole’s bill makes reference to the state constitution in a way that could put it in that panel’s purview.

I think it better to refer this bill to the circular file. Thanks to a new blog – and PAC – called Virginia Family Values PAC for pointing this bill out. It’s not what the name might lead you to think.

Others are also assaulting contraception through funding measures.

In his speech last night, Gov. Warner expressed a willingness to compromise on the charter plan proposed by the state’s top universities. One of the losers may be university workers.

The legislation also is similar to permission the state gave its major medical centers in Richmond and Charlottesville nine years ago to operate free of some state bureaucrats and regulations.

UVa administrators point to the hospital as a major success under codified autonomy, but many of its workers are poorly paid and do not enjoy the benefits of state employees, Gaines of the NAACP said.

“We also know that the state has failed to do its part to address higher education’s needs,” [John J. Gaines III, a retired Charlottesville principal at McGuffey, Jefferson and Walker schools] said Tuesday. “We are concerned about the lower-paid workers at the university” and how they would be treated under charter status.

The UVA faculty also has some concerns. They outlined here.

The Charlottesville Daily Progress, perhaps not surprisingly, has covered this story well. You can find its stories here.

In last night’s State of the Commonwealth speech, Gov. Mark had no surprises. But as much as what he said, here’ what he didn’t say:

The speech also was notable for what Warner didn’t say.

1. No mention of the GOP-proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage
2. Silence on Jerry Kilgore’s cynical Death Penalty enhancement Act
3. No support for a constitutional amendment preventing raids on the Transportation Fund.

I can understand #1 and #2. But why not, as Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine has done, support a lock box on the Transportation Fund? Granted, it’s disingenuous to suggest, as some conservatives do, that that solves the state’s transportation problems, but that kind of discipline is what voters – including many who opposed the transportation referenda in 2002 – are looking for.