As I read this story, I thought I’d found something I could agree with Del. Morgan Griffith (R-Salem). Why shouldn’t newspapers be subject to the same BPOL tax as other businesses? And let’s face it, newspapers are businesses first. Keepers of first amendment rights is somewhere down the list. But then I read

Griffith said his bill does not apply to broadcast media, partly because “the broadcast media hasn’t been asking us to raise taxes.” He also said broadcasters are not “filling up landfills” as discarded newspapers do.

Griffith acknowledged that some will question his motives and accuse him of using the legislative process to settle a score with the newspaper.

“Certainly people can say that,” he said. “But all I did was take the same arguments they’ve made during the last year, two years, three years, five years and apply them to their industry.”

And, Griffith added: “If they’re intellectually honest, they will have to support this.”

Well, if you were intellectually honest, Mo, well, you wouldn’t be Mo.

In a story about an onerous bill that was brought down, in part by the efforts of a Virginia blogger, we learn that

Political blogs proliferated during the 2004 presidential election. Many have survived and are becoming powerful tools for generating grassroots responses on public policy.

Rem Rieder, editor of American Journalism Review, said the blog phenomenon has both positive and negative consequences.

“It’s certainly a way of stimulating participation in the political process. It’s a way to get involved instantly,” he said. “But the potential for bullying and intimidation is there. You wouldn’t want people to not be putting in bills because they’d be flogged by blogs. And it can be a way of spreading misinformation or distorted information quickly. Blogs, while they are fascinating, are not journalism.”

“Flogged”? “Spreading misinformation or distorted information quickly”? I thought that was the job of Fox News.

Here’s the legislative agenda of the Family Foundation. They not only want to limit abortions; they want to withhold state funds from Planned Parenthood that tries to provide information on how to avoid pregnancies.

Here’s why sane folks are saying there is no real “surplus” in the state’s budget.

They note that most of the surplus is being spent to repay special accounts Virginia raided to balance the budget during the recession. They point to reports saying that inflationary increases in health care and education mean that the state will have to generate at least $2.5 million in new revenues just to keep pace during the two-year budget cycle starting July 1, 2006.

The DNC!

And to all the Republicans who criticized Democrats for name-calling during the last election, here’s what the GOP has to say about the $5 million committed by the DNC to Kaine’s election.

Ken Hutcheson, Kilgore’s campaign manager, dismissed the forthcoming DNC commitment as “national liberal money” and predicted that it will be used to provide Kaine with an “extreme political makeover” to disguise his liberal record.

“The DNC and its stable of liberal candidates represent the interests and Hollywood values of Michael Moore and Whoopi Goldberg,” Hutcheson said, “while Attorney General Jerry Kilgore is aligned with common-sense, conservative Virginia values and voters.”

Hutcheson said he expects Kilgore’s campaign to have a “strong working partnership with the Republican National Committee, the Republican Governors Association and the White House.”

…”No amount of money the DNC spends will buy Tim Kaine a mainstream record,” said RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie.

Call them liberals and you’ve made your case to the people: the GOP modus operandi.

Kaine also introduced his legislative agenda for the upcoming session. Two that address the most pressing problems in Virginia:

_ A bill restricting tuition increases as state-supported colleges and universities to the rate of inflation unless the legislature fails to appropriate sufficient money under a formula for meeting higher education’s base adequacy needs;

_ A constitutional amendment that forbids lawmakers from using the Transportation Trust Fund to balance the general fund budget in lean years. “When you’re telling somebody that we’re taking this money from you at the gas pump and this money will go to

But does he really have to pander with the tort reform bone he throws. No one has convinced me there’s really a big problem. The instances of “too hot coffee” suits are few and far between.

It’s true that damage awards are partly responsible for soaring malpractice premiums that drive health costs up and doctors out of business. Unfortunately doctors’ groups continue to resist efforts outside the tort system to address the serious problem of medical errors. They want relief from liability without greater disclosure or more aggressive disciplining of doctors.

The truth is tort reform is all about protecting special interests.

The medical malpractice bill backed by President Bush would prevent consumers from seeking punitive damages from the makers of Vioxx and Celebrex, two popular pain medications recently linked to increased risks of heart attacks and strokes, according to legal experts on both sides of the issue.
While Bush often touts the medical malpractice proposals as a prudent way to stop frivolous lawsuits against doctors, the bill’s less-discussed liability protections for pharmaceutical companies such as Merck & Co., the manufacturer of Vioxx, is generating controversy this week.

Two bills to be offered in the Virginia General Assembly next week could bring private school students one step closer to yellow school buses. The Pupil Transportation Bill, HB 1658, sponsored by senate (sic) patrons L. Scott Lingamfelter, Mark L. Cole and William R. Janis would authorize, but not require, school boards to provide transportation to any student residing in their district to any school in which the student is lawfully enrolled, provided that the school is not operated for profit.

House Bill No. 1589, sponsored by Rep. Gary Reese from Northern Virginia, would amend the Code of Virginia by adding a section numbered 22.1-176.1 saying, “Local school boards may enter into agreements with nonpublic schools within the school division to provide pupil transportation for a fee to and from such schools.”

Catholic schools make the argument that they save taxpayer money. But so do the people who don’t use parks or have never had their house catch fire. The decision to send their kids to private schools is totally voluntary. Where do you draw the line?

“It’s never enough for them. They’re never satisfied. Their priority is not the children of Virginia. Their priority is money.”

— Del. John J. Welch III, R-Virginia Beach, speaking of the Virginia Education Association’s request for a five percent pay raise when the governor is offering three percent.

That comment is all too typical of those who don’t want to raise taxes for better teacher pay. And it hits home with Virginians who are just glad to have a job, let alone a pay raise. Teachers deserve more, especially Virginia teachers.

In the 1989-1990 school year, Virginia teacher pay trailed the national average by $423.

Now that gap is nearly $3,000, the VEA said.

But the VEA should figure out a better way to lobby for those increases. Instead of every year asking for more money, why don’t teacher unions develop a long-range plan, with an accompanying bill, to increase salaries to either national levels or beyond, so they only have to sell the idea once. Otherwise, they do open themselves to the charges that “it’s never enough.”

That plan ought to include some concessions to critics. My kids go to one the state’s best high schools – one of the nation’s best, if you believe Newsweek rankings. But there are a few lousy teachers there, mostly older ones that tenure rules seem to prohibit firing. If teachers were willing to work with critics to develop more accountability to go along with higher pay, maybe they can achieve that goal of adequate pay. And that’s what we’re talking about. If Virginia teachers achieve parity with the national average, that only means they have achieved a higher level of still inadequate pay. But politically, it’s a long-term project, not asking for more each legislative session.

Maybe such a plan exists, if not in Virginia in other states or at a national level. But I’m afraid many people just hear “it’s never enough.”

If Virginia Democrats can’t take advantage of the preposterous propaganda coming from Republicans on transportation issues, they don’t deserve to win back more seats in the Assembly come November. I hope the Dems party chair Kerry Donley has assigned someone at the Dems HQ in Richmond to clip every GOP reference to fixing our transportation problems without tax increases. Invariably such articles have someone, often from the business community, saying, essentially, they’ve got their heads in the sand.

Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore professed support yesterday for many of the expensive transportation upgrades dear to Northern Virginia business leaders. But he flatly rejected tax increases to pay for them.

Speaking to the Virginia Public Affairs Group of the Greater Washington Board of Trade, Kilgore embraced a proposed rail line to Dulles International Airport, widening Interstate 66 and building a new bridge spanning the Potomac River.

But Kilgore, the Republican Party’s likely gubernatorial candidate this year, said the billions of dollars those and other transportation projects would cost should not come from tax increases.

Rather, he said, the state can meet its pressing transportation needs by relying on partnerships with private businesses and tax revenue captured from a growing economy.

…Robert T. Grow, the Board of Trade’s director of government relations, said he welcomed Kilgore’s acknowledgement that more money is needed for transportation. But he said a no-tax pledge is shortsighted.

“The lower the taxes the better, that’s the way we feel,” he said. “The public-private partnerships are great, but the numbers have to work. There are many projects that will require government funding. You have to be realistic.”

The challenge for the business community is to put their money where their mouth is. Some have: the Hazels, the Leadership for Virginia PAC, Mike Anziolotti of the Virginia Business Council and others have financially supported Democrats running against flat-earthers. But it will take a brave effort for some business groups to finance challengers to incumbents either at the primary level and even more so in November when the choice will be a no-tax Republican or (Omigod) a Democrat.

The modus operandi of Bush appointees before Senate confirmation hearings is often to simply say they can’t remember details of incidents that may damage their chances of appointment. Note how many times Alberto “See No Evil” Gonzales claims he can’t remember something that happened only a few months ago.

[U]nder often tough questioning from Democrats and some Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales said he could not recall key details of his involvement in the production of an August 2002 memo that narrowly defined the tactics that constitute torture.

…Gonzales testified that while he disagreed with portions of the Justice Department memo, he could not recall whether he conveyed those objections to other government lawyers at the time.

…Gonzales said he could not remember who had requested the legal guidance on permissible interrogation tactics — many officials have said it was the CIA — but he acknowledged under questioning that high-pressure interrogation techniques were discussed in White House meetings at which he was present.

…”I don’t recall today whether I was in agreement with all the analysis….

…Gonzales declined to answer many questions and said he could not recall details in relation to many others, prompting complaints from some Democrats on the committee.

But Gonzales had another strategy for dealing with questions that made him squirm.

In response to a question from Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) about whether U.S. personnel could legally engage in torture under any circumstances, Gonzales said: “I don’t believe so, but I’d want to get back to you on that and make sure I don’t provide a misleading answer.”

Why worry? If he approves torture as the AG, when later asked about his involvement he can just say “I can’t remember.”

US Airways got a gift from a judge yesterday when he “unilaterally terminated a union collective bargaining agreement” between the airline and its machinists who now face 35% pay cuts. The AP story then goes on to say:

Pressuring workers for concessions is about the only way (emphasis added) to save large chunks of money in an industry where many of the costs, like aircraft leases, fuel and landing fees are essentially fixed, with little room to haggle. In US Airways’ case, it is in the midst of seeking a third round of concessions from its unions in less than three years.

…The judge also terminated three pension plans for US Airways workers and retirees that would have cost the airline nearly $1 billion through 2009 if they remained in effect. Mitchell called the pension obligations a “financial albatross” that would make it impossible for US Airways to attract the investment necessary for it to emerge from bankruptcy.

Why is it that a collective bargaining agreement is fungible but contracts for leases, fuel and landing fees aren’t? Why is it only the worker and not the airlines suppliers who must take the hit? Couldn’t the judge have ruled that the contracts with airports are null and void?

It’s not only the workers who will take the hit. Taxpayers will, too.

The airline has said most retirees will receive the same level of benefits from the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., which will take over the funds. But that did little to mollify dozens of retirees who attended Thursday’s hearing and shouted at CEO Bruce Lakefield as he left the courthouse.

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. is federally funded and rapidly going broke as it takes up the slack of companies that say they can no longer fund promised retirement benefits. It’s taxpayer money that’s bailing them out, much like the savings and loan crisis of the Reagan era.