“”I had to decide, do I want money for roads or do I want money for other stuff? I chose roads,” Mr. Albo said.”

–Del. Dave Albo (R-Fairfax) The “other stuff” was $29 million, enough to build maybe ¼ of an interchange, that he voted to cut from Kaine’s budget amendment that would have made up for federal cuts in child care assistance to the poor.

Hell, just let them carry the toddlers to the construction site. They can climb on the rafters. They’ll have a grand ole’ time.

Lisa Rein reaches way up there to pull this one to the light of day.

Byrne has always represented the Democrats’ liberal wing, supporting abortion rights, a strong role for government and environmental regulation. She has a tell-it-like it-is style that has driven politicians and voters away and rallied them to her, in equal parts, over two decades.

In “equal parts”? Has she done polling on this? Interviewed a scientifically random sample of voters?

When I read stories like today’s AP contribution to pack journalism, I’m reminded of one of Dave Poisson’s best lines in his debate against Dick Black for the eastern Loudoun County’s House seat in Virginia’s General Assembly. Black repeatedly attacked Poisson for not being in lock step with his party’s gubernatorial candidate Tim Kaine on some issues. Black, meanwhile, touted his devotion to every one of Jerry Kilgore’s positions. Poisson rose to respond and said, “One thing great about being a Democrat is that we get to think for ourselves.” The crowd roared its approval.

Democrats in Congress almost unanimously agree on many things: that the war was a mistake (Sen. Joe Lieberman the only noteworthy exception); that Social Security should not be privatized; that deficits need to be addressed; that tax cuts have helped overwhelmingly the well-to-do; that the economic playing filed is anything but level; and on and on. But because they don’t have a single answer as to the timeline for getting out of Iraq — while the GOP has no timeline at all and simply wants to stay the disastrous course — Democrats are headed for defeat in November.

[P]rimary clashes are drawing unwanted attention to Democratic divisions on the war while raising questions about whether the Democrats’ competing factions are, in effect, torpedoing the party’s chances to make 2006 a referendum on Bush’s handling of Iraq.

If I’m a voter unhappy with the war — as an overwhelming majority of Americans are — and hold George Bush responsible for the debacle — as they do — they why would the Democrats, who are not in power and but for a very few, feel we should set some type of timetable for getting out, be the party at risk in November?

Because the press, regurgitating the Bush spin, says so.

Of course, the GOP has no view on when the war should end, except when the mission is accomplished, when they Iraqis step up. Completely lacking in the press are any voices asking very simple questions of the president: How will we know that the Iraqis have “stepped up”? What constitutes a “stable Iraq”? How will we know when we’ve won the war on terror? What will victory look like? Will one terrorist attack in the world every month mean the war is still on? How about one per year?

And again, courtesy of the AP, we get from the press the idea that it is liberals and leftists who want out of Iraq.

Senate primary fights in Connecticut and Washington state as well as a few House contests pit the party’s liberal wing — proponents of candidates who want an immediate end to the conflict — against moderates favored by Democratic leaders in Washington.

Arguably the most high-profile and contentious case is Connecticut, where three-term Sen. Joe Lieberman is under siege for his staunch support of the war and Bush’s national security policies. Liberal bloggers and left-leaning groups are pushing the candidacy of multimillionaire businessman Ned Lamont, who wants U.S. troops to start coming home now.

… Jerry McNerney said it was time to withdraw U.S. troops, and his campaign had the support of proponents of former anti-war presidential candidate Howard Dean. Moderate Democrat Steve Filson opposed an immediate withdrawal and was preferred by House Democratic leaders. McNerney won the June primary and will try to unseat seven-term Republican Rep. Richard Pombo (news, bio, voting record).

Liberals also have targeted first-term Sen. Maria Cantwell (news, bio, voting record), D-Wash., who supported the war but has criticized Bush’s stewardship. She faces challenges from anti-war activists who want U.S. troops out, including one candidate who has the support of peace activist Cindy Sheehan. The challengers lack the cash and name recognition, but their candidacies have caused the state’s political left to turn on Cantwell because of the war. The primary is Sept. 19.

… Eli Pariser, director of MoveOn, a liberal group backing Lamont, said: “We’re trying to play a constructive role in helping amplify the boldest voices and quiet the ones which are undermining the way that the Democrats are different from the Republicans.”

The November elections will be the arbiter on the effectiveness of liberal groups.

“Can they swing general elections is the big question, and so far we don’t know the answer. But they certainly can have an impact on primaries,” said Matt Bennett, co-founder of Third Way, a group of moderate Democrats.

Just how many times can a reporter use the words “liberal” and “leftist” in a story to describe a viewpoint that is indeed moderate or even conservative — the notion that foreign entanglements should be taken very judiciously, while labeling such adventurism as “moderate”?

It is destructive to political discourse to choose incorrect adjectives to describe a viewpoint. Most people consider themselves moderates, rather than radicals or reactionaries, and most Americans are opposed to this war. Have Americans become radicalized?

Finally, this AP story ends with a poor analogy.

If 1968 is any guide, Iraq could continue to have repercussions. Nearly 40 years ago, Vietnam so divided the party that Democrats lost to Richard M. Nixon.

While the anti-war movement was only beginning to get its legs in 1968, the general public was not there yet. Contrary to today, the Vietnam war still had widespread support.

[I]n a poll conducted in February 1968, 25 per cent wanted to “gradually broaden and intensify our military operations”, and 28 per cent wanted to “start an all-out crash effort in the hope of winning the war quickly even at the risk of China or Russia entering the war”. Just 24 per cent wanted to “discontinue the struggle and begin to pull out of Vietnam gradually in the near future”, and 10 per cent wanted to “continue the war at the present level of military effort”.

But hey, why let facts get in the way of a good story?

This may be a Brooklyn race, but it should reverberate in Virginia. It seems the only white candidate running in the Democratic primary to replace the retiring black congressman, who calls the candidate a “colonizer,” raises some important issues for Democrats in general and Virginia Democrats in particular.

The Voting Rights Act addressed the issue of black representation by fostering a plan that has led to many districts being black majorities, and many in the black establishment feel those seats belong to black candidates only.

But some Democratic strategists have begun to question whether strict adherence to a 40-year-old model of minority-dominated districts could be hurting the party in the long term. Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said that at one time it made sense for the courts and state legislatures to carve out majority-black districts to break racially discriminatory practices, primarily in the South.

Looking at the map of congressional districts today, Emanuel asked: “Are we at the point in the political process where you don’t need a 70 percent district, but a 50 to 45 district, with the political capacity to be more competitive in surrounding areas, so that more Democrats can win?”

The rapid transformation of urban areas could force Democratic and civil rights leaders to rethink minority districts, voting rights experts say. A combination of gentrification, immigration, intermarriage and a migrating black middle class “means that race just doesn’t have the power that it once did, in these kinds of settings,” said Edward Blum, a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute who has written extensively about minority districts.

In fact, drawing districts that are designed to give black candidates a leg up does a disservice to black interests.

[Black congressmen] are all serving in the Democratic minority. “Remember, the [Voting Rights Act] is about black voters, not black elected officials,” {senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies David A] Bositis said. “And black voters are not having their interests represented, although there are more black members of Congress.”

This brings up an even larger issue of how special interest groups can hold the Democratic party hostage. Many single issue groups demand fealty to their point of view and by doing so, fracture the Democratic Party. In this particular case, despite the changing demographics of this Brooklyn district, the attachment to affirmative action among the Congressional Black Caucus is so great that they are willing to destroy a candidate simply because he is white, which to many moderates, Democrats and Republicans alike, sounds like blatant discrimination. Genuflecting at the altar of pro-abortion forces who will not tolerate anyone who favors, say, parental notice, can hurt the party as can damning those who favor gay rights but not mandated gay marriages. We may be a big tent party but with lots of little teepees inside.

I believe there is still a role for affirmative action. I’m particularly supportive of it when it is a voluntary action by corporations, whose employees and customers would well be served by more black perspectives. And the charge that better qualified white candidates are losing jobs because of it rings hollow, as if judging a candidate is like a true/false exam. And I think the Voting Rights Act still has a role to play in preventing the kind of racial politics being played in Georgia, where the state is trying to require certain photo IDs for voters.

But eventually, the Democratic Party will need to figure out how they can respond to the legitimate concerns of moderates who think the mindset of some black politicians is doing the party far more harm than good.

If Virginia Democrats have any input into redistricting in 2010, they will need to face the issue of how to redraw the House of Delegates districts that are now primarily black. Would it improve Democrats chances to break up some of those districts to ensure more Democrats are elected, but perhaps fewer blacks?

From the latest Jim Webb campaign email, here are the purported internal poll numbers:

·Once voters are read a short positive profile of each candidate, the race is in a statistical dead heat (Webb 44%, Allen 43%).
·In the current ballot, Allen leads by 7%, 46% to 39%, but falls short of 50%.
·While Virginians are generally hopeful about the course of the Commonwealth, they are pessimistic about the direction of the country as a whole and feel that the President’s policies, which Senator Allen almost uniformly supports, are not working.
·Four in ten voters say that Allen is doing only a fair or poor job as Senator and over a majority (62%) believes George W. Bush is doing a fair or poor job as President.

Internals must always be viewed with some skepticism, but if true, George Allen is in for a long, hard battle.

I wonder how many people who think Ken Lay cheated us by dying are also death penalty proponents?

I’m one of those who feel cheated by his untimely demise. I’m also suspicious enough to wonder how they got the autopsy report so quickly. It’s as if they anticipated the furor. But it’s funny that often it seems to take weeks before we get autopsy reports. This time we got it within hours.

But the larger point is the death penalty. One reason I’m opposed to the death penalty is that if it were me, I’d much rather be killed than spend a lifetime in prison. So I think a life sentence, or one approximating it as Lay’s may have been, is the greater punishment. Maybe those of you who read more blogs than me can find the inconsistency of those who think Lay “got off easy” but support the death penalty.

In any case, The Post story this morning suggests that Lay’s heirs won’t pay a price, and that is a real travesty.

As my bro’ said, “He got off easy.”

From the story here’s the quote I love:

Lay also defended his extravagant lifestyle, including a $200,000 yacht for wife Linda’s birthday party, despite $100 million in personal debt and saying “it was difficult to turn off that lifestyle like a spigot.”

That’s why poor people stay poor, I guess: They can’t turn off that spigot of a lifestyle.

UPDATE: Andrew Cohen thinks we’re being too hard on Kenny Boy.

What happened at Enron–what happened to the tens of thousands of people impacted by it– was truly awful. But it wasn’t just Lay, or Skilling for that matter, who are responsible. The failure at Enron was a system-wide failure of corporate America. It was a failure of lawyers and accountants and public-relations officials and market analysts. It was a failure of judges and lawmakers who watered down securities law. In short, it was the failure of a great many people, whose culpability is both known and unknown, but who, unlike Lay, will be able to spend another day, another week, another month, another year on this Earth. I don’t call that a case where Lay “got off easy. I call that yet another tragedy in a story that has been filled with them.

But judging from the 99 comments, few agree with him.

Del. Ken Plum’s recent email sums it up pretty well:

While a mere few weeks ago I promised to end the wailing about the current legislative session, I am back again more upset than ever before about the actions in Richmond. At a meeting of the General Assembly last week to wind up the longest legislative session in its history, the legislature needed only to review and vote on a number of amendments proposed by Governor Timothy M. Kaine to tidy up the $74 billion record-breaking biennial budget. Instead the Republican majority in the House of Delegates in the most arrogant abuse of power that I have ever seen in my nearly three decades in the House used the occasion to figuratively stick a finger in the eye of the Governor and to deny Democrats an opportunity to even present or to debate any amendments to the final budget package. It was tragic to watch events unfold in what over the years has been a fairly collegial body.

After prolonged recesses at the beginning of the session, the Republican majority voted in their caucus with a two-thirds vote required to bind themselves to vote as their caucus decided, regardless of the interest of the voters and constituents in their districts. That system allows the most conservative ideologues to dictate the position of the party and to enforce party discipline. No one including the most moderate of Northern Virginia Republicans has been willing to buck the system. Presumably the penalty for not going along with the caucus would be the loss of committee assignments or the failure of future bills or budget amendments of interest to the member. The Democratic caucus has no such rules and allows members to vote the interests of their district.

The result of the excesses of partisanship and the blatant abuse of power is an inconsistent and incoherent product. For example, the General Assembly approved a record $285 million to clean up the Chesapeake Bay but refused to approve or even allow debate on a four million dollar amendment for the City of Lynchburg to improve its antiquated sewer system that continues with heavy rains as we have had lately to dump raw sewage into the James River to flow into the Chesapeake Bay. Lynchburg’s offense in the eyes of the majority was to elect a very intelligent and effective Democratic woman to the House of Delegates in the last special election.

The biennial budget contains a billion dollars in capital building projects mostly for colleges and universities, but the Republican majority refused to allow debate on or to approve an amendment for $1.4 million in funding to begin the architectural and engineering phase of renovating the library at Norfolk State University that accreditation authorities say is necessary for the historically black university to maintain its accreditation. The Republican majority refused to approve or to allow debate on an amendment that would have provided $200,000 for an institute for minority leadership when the state provides two and a half times that amount to an institute that provides the same kind of training to predominately white persons. All members of the Black Caucus in the House are Democrats.

The House majority Republicans including presumably moderates like Callahan, Rust, and Albo refused to approve or even allow debate on a $6 million budget amendment to allow fund balances to be used in a 50-50 match with localities to replace the loss of federal funds for child care services for the working poor. If the local governments cannot come up with the money, large numbers of children especially in Fairfax County will be without daycare.

In my State of the Commonwealth – 2006 address (www.kenplum.com) I called the legislature dysfunctional. On the last day of a session that has gone on for months, Delegate Ward Armstrong took the floor to observe that we had just had a dysfunctional ending for a dysfunctional session. The voters of Virginia need to take back control of the General Assembly from the tyrannical mob that is running it now.