From what I know of Gerry Baliles, he was courageous when he proposed an increase in the sales tax a couple of decades ago. Now that he’s out of office, why is he proposing such a simplistic idea as collecting tolls on major highways as the sole way of raising money for transportation?

Ok, maybe it isn’t the sole way, but it’s the only way described in today Washington Post article. Rather than be courageous and innovative now, he simply says collect tolls. What about raising the gas, sales or income taxes or implementing land use planning directives that minimize car trips?

Baliles described the state’s deficiencies in transportation as “overwhelming” and the costs for fixing them as “enormous.” He wrote that a lack of political will to make substantive changes led him to the toll proposal.

“Resistance to any form of tax increase remains strong, and the rising gas prices only increase that resistance,” he wrote. But, he said, “the bottom line is that transportation needs must be able to depend upon dedicated revenue sources.”

He’s right about the lack of political will. But why not call for leaders to show some leadership and offer comprehensive solutions?

[Baliles] also is part of a consortium of leading developers who submitted an offer this summer to purchase and upgrade the Dulles Toll Road for more than $1 billion in exchange for toll revenue. The state is considering the offer.

Tolls have their place, but there are costs — in time. Can you imagine what the commute would be like in Northern Virginia if toll booths sprouted up as Baliles suggests? Anyone ride I-95 in Delaware where the toll booth can back up traffic for miles?

With gas prices hitting $3.00/gallon and Virginians like the Grinnages of Chesterfield County not blinking an eye, does it occur to anyone that if Virginians were told that if gasoline prices drop back to 2004 levels, like they were when the increased transportation spending of the budget was scuttled, we ‘re going to raise the gas tax 20 cents but would fix the state’s transportation system that Virginians would say alleluia?

Good move by Kaine, no matter how the conservatives want to spin it. If the debate is held the same day as the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce debate, which seems to be the plan, it will blunt anything Kilgore has to say and make the story all about his not wanting to debate Potts. It also gives Kaine a chance to show himself as the more moderate of the three candidates.

Look for Potts to eventually endorse Kaine.

Here’s the typical right-wing tactic. To my post yesterday about Rat Robertson, Steve Sisson asks, am I “pro-Chavez,” the duly elected socialist president of Venezuela?

You see, if you criticize a truly wacko right-wing nut, you are considered a socialist. Perhaps Steve’s remark had to do with my saying that Venezuelans were “a little smarter” by voting for their economic interests than were American voters last year who seemed to vote against their own interests by electing Bush, who has systematically favored the rich and dismantled middle class programs, yet gets their votes. So I must be a socialist. The fact is that American-backed capitalism hasn’t work for a huge portion of the Latin America. So Venezuelans, at least, are up for trying something else.

Socialism doesn’t have much a track record, and I know too little about Chavez and his program to comment, but my guess is if he sticks to socialist principles, his regime, too, will eventually fail. Equal poverty doesn’t hold much long-term attraction.

But the long-term prospects for American-style capitalism aren’t too promising, either. At the rate we’re going, we’re all going to have to work longer than ever before, and the divide between the workers and the capitalists will continue to grow because we’ve got not a pure capitalist system but a form of corporate welfare and privilege.

But back to the bait-and-switch. Can you imagine what the outcry would be from the right if Michael Moore called for an assassination of anyone? The Venezuelan government is right to say if Bush were truly dedicated to fight terrorism, he’d have Robertson arrested. After all, we’re tracking down Muslims who call for an Islamic jihad and shipping them off to Guantanamo. But instead, the Bush administration is supporting his right to free speech and saying his remarks were simply “inappropriate.” Wearing white in winter is inappropriate; Robertson’s remarks have done damage to the U.S. relationship with an entire continent. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Robertson was simply a “private citizen.” Yeah, so are the jihadists.

I don’t think Robertson should be arrested. Besides, he does progressives more good by spouting his ignorance and hypocrisy. But we’re getting closer in this country to being just like the Taliban by suggesting that criticism of Robertson makes one a socialist, and hence, the enemy of America. The administration, of course, is making it a proposition of you’re either for us or against us. Iraqi War dissidents are defeatists who don’t want to win the war on terrorism.

Pretty pathetic. And Americans are catching on.

That paragon of Christian hypocrisy, Pat Robertson, said Monday that the U.S. should kill Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. I guess that’s what Christ would have done, don’t you think?

I’ve been criticized before about my lack of patience with the American Taliban. Folks say I’m anti-Christian. But when such a supposedly mainstream, highly respected leader of Christianity like Robertson says things like this, what am I to believe? Christianity has been hijacked by the right-wing nuts.

Chavez has responded by saying such remarks will test Bush’s anti-terrorism policy.

Or does it just apply to Muslims?

The stupidity of Robertson’s remarks is evidenced by the opinion that he just played into Chavez’s hand. Certainly, his reputation will improve in Latin America if people believe the U.S. wants to assassinate him.

[L]eftism is on the rise again in Latin America for a reason, namely the burgeoning feeling around the region that a decade of U.S.-backed capitalist reforms has simply widened an already epic gap between rich and poor—and that the Bush Administration is indifferent to it.

I guess the South Americans are a little smarter than U.S. voters. They know where their economic interests lie, and they’re not going to back the very people who are oppressing them.

Want to know how crack ideas like “intelligent design” make it to the mainstream? It’s all about money. Say what you will, the right is willing to put its money where its mouth is.

The right side of the political spectrum continues its wringing of hands over the press that gubernatorial candidate Sen. Russ Potts gets. The latest is a pretty innocuous article by Tyler Whitely of the Richmond Times Dispatch. It treats us to few bits of real news (that Potts says he won’t run again after this race being one of them). One Man’s Trash’s tirade against RTD is inexplicably described as “incisive ” by Bacon’s Rebellion. And of course, Commonwealth Conservative is also upset with Potts and calls Trash’s post “analysis.”

While the right gnashes its fangs over Potts and the press he gets, it ignores Jerry Kilgore’s patently absurd promises. Granted, Potts has thus far not said exactly how he will pay for his transportation programs, but he makes clear that more revenue — and he uses the word taxes — are needed. In fact, Norman at Trash rants about Potts saying he’ll fund transportation by “putting everything on the table.”

“Everything, then means everything that can be taxed. How visionary.”

Of course, clear vision is not something their candidate seems to have when it comes to how he’ll pay for his promises. The Hampton Roads Daily Press editorial page, which also criticizes Tim Kaine and to a lesser extent Russ Potts for fuzzy math, takes particular aim at Kilgore for outlandish, irresponsible politicking.

As for Kilgore … well, Kilgore appears to be operating on the basis of some sort of new math where, apparently, it just doesn’t matter if the numbers don’t add up.

Check these off: Kilgore embraces all of Kaine’s tax cuts and adds repeal of the 2004 state budget agreement. He would have voters decide for themselves on taxes via referendums, but also wants new regional transportation authorities with taxing powers.

That’s just for starters. Earlier this month Kilgore got on a dizzying roll.

He started out in Norton by making a big pitch for the so-called Coalfields Expressway, a $4 billion, 51-mile boondoggle for three rural southwest Virginia counties. Kilgore promised to make the road a priority, despite the fact that the federal government recently pulled out of the project, citing ballooning costs.

Kilgore also called for expansion of the Governor’s Opportunity Fund (that’s the money the governor hands out as “enticements”), urged the doubling of tax credits for economically distressed areas (“good money after good money,” he said) and pledged to abolish the estate tax.

Warmed up, Kilgore trotted over to Henry County and said he wanted a new four-year college for Southside. “We can’t wait. We have to work on that (a new college) immediately,” he told a crowd.

Finally, appearing in Charlottesville before local government officials, Kilgore was back on the subject of roads. He opposes increases in the state gas tax, but told local government officials that he would complete old road projects, widen Interstate 66 within the Washington Capital Beltway and get the third crossing of Hampton Roads done.

The money for these fine transportation undertakings will be drawn from the state’s general fund, the principal source of revenue for education. Or so he says.

And where exactly does that leave Kilgore’s commitment to the traditional Republican principles of smaller government and fiscal responsibility? He’ll need to say, because from this vantage point it’s hard to see.

I just wish the right would be intellectually honest. I think starting the conversation by saying you’re against tax increases is bass ackwards. Star with what you expect from government and then determine how to pay for it. But taxes seem as far as many on the right can go with respect to financial planning. Letting your candidate off the hook by passively endorsing outlandish promises suggests that principle is not at the heart of the right’s agenda.

Because somebody is about to be blowing up your ass. And it may be the House GOP leaders.

They’re proposing again to eliminate the estate tax. As Washington Post writers Jeffrey H. Birnbaum and Jonathan Weisman recently put it

The very rich and the merely rich are fighting over the fate of the estate tax.

So far, the very rich are winning.

But they are helped by Times-Dispatch writer Michael Hardy, who begins his story today “House Republicans yesterday promised to fight for tax relief for family-owned businesses….”

To be fair, it’s not just the House GOP. Our fair-haired Democratic nominee for governor is not be outdone by Jerry Kilgore. Tim Kaine, too, wants to eliminate the estate tax. But the rouse they all allow to fester is that eliminating it will somehow save family-owned businesses. But what if we kept the exemption at what it currently is – $3.5 million? Here’s what Birnbaum and Weisman found out.

Clearly, however, the benefits would not be widespread. A new study by the Congressional Budget Office concluded that a $3.5 million exemption in 2000 would have forced a mere 94 family-owned businesses and 65 family farms to pay any estate tax — which works out to 0.007 percent of adult deaths that year. Only 54 such enterprises would have had to liquidate assets to pay the taxes, the study added.

Fifty-four, or on average, about one per state. Ok, who is the most powerful small businessman in Virginia? Whoever he is, he’s got the power to move the entire political machinery to his singular benefit.

The Wall Street Journal is miffed at news coverage of the economy.

Media coverage of President Bush’s tax cuts has been particularly slanted. During the 2003 tax-cut debate, three of every four major TV network news stories were negative. The favorite criticisms were liberal echoes that it would bust the budget and favor the rich.

Do you think the fact that the cuts did “bust the budget and favor the rich” have anything to do with the coverage? Or like my previous post suggests, there should be both sides of an argument presented even when the other side is patently preposterous?

That’s Jon Carroll’s characterization of creationists, intelligent designers, as they now call themselves. And they’ve learned the “both sides” rule of journalism.