The Hampton Roads Daily Press thinks we’re endanger of becoming a citizenry that worries about “me, myself and I.”

Nearly a half-century ago John F. Kennedy spoke of the social contract: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

Such language is not especially fashionable in civic life today. The talk is of tax breaks, of the threat to individual privacy if cameras are used to catch people running red lights, of the “burden” that government imposes on citizens. As a society, we are hardly inclined to ask government to look after the other fellow. In fact, at times we even seem to resent giving government the resources to look out for me, myself and I. Hence the insufficiency of funds for public safety and transportation, never mind how stingy Virginia is when it comes to providing medical care for the poor.

Perhaps the winds are shifting. The slight increase in the state sales tax, agreed to by the General Assembly last year, is evidence of such change. 2005 will offer ample opportunity to weigh whether that action was a fluke or a trend. When issues are weighed – transportation, Medicaid, education and many others – will the rhetoric that prevails in the legislature this winter and on the campaign trail in the fall be the rhetoric of crass self-interest? Let’s hope for – let’s insist upon – something broader, something more ennobling.

…You are doing something right.

Though the numbers of teenagers engaging in risky behavior remains alarmingly high, public health officials are increasingly cheered by the trend.

They cite a variety of reasons for it, including slick commercials that educate teens on the consequences of drugs and cigarettes and sex.

There’s also the possibility that today’s hyper-busy children – raised by peripatetic parents – have no time to waste.

Perhaps the most hopeful reason is one embedded in the generation gap between today’s teens and today’s parents, those party-children of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

When they were young, today’s parents engaged in precisely the same kinds of risky behavior available to their children, to the dismay of their own parents, and despite plenty of unheeded calls to reform.

Perhaps because of their own hard, dangerous lessons, and because of their exposure to all the messages that didn’t work, today’s parents have an easier time doing something their folks found difficult: getting their children to listen.

The number of male elementary school teachers is at a 40-year low.

“With an absence of male elementary teachers, children are missing the experience of an alternative authority figure, a healthy male role model and, in the case of minority men, a valuable cultural connection that could inspire kids to learn more and better,” said NEA spokeswoman Melinda Anderson.

Have they made their mark and helped kids achieve theirs?

Allen will be up for re-election next year, and Warner has been mentioned as his likely opponent. But Warner associates are urging him to forgo a Senate race that he might not win and begin running for the Democratic presidential nomination as soon as he leaves office in January 2006. A Senate race against Allen would take up too much time, these associates say.

“If Warner wants to run for president, he should run for president. If he wants to run for the Senate, he should run for the Senate. He shouldn’t try to do both,” said political consultant Steve Jarding, who managed Warner’s gubernatorial campaign in 2001 and worked for Sens. John Edwards of North Carolina and Bob Graham of Florida when they sought the Democratic presidential nomination early last year.

And will Warner run on his education record?

With at least three major proposals in the works for higher ed – the New College in Southside, the Charter Plan by the big three and the governor’s plan to allow high school students more opportunities to take college level course – the Daily Press makes sense in asking what’s the overall strategy of higher ed in the state.

Consider the developments that drove these three plans to the forefront: the growing importance of a college-educated work force in the state’s competitiveness, the increase in demand for college admission, the need to expand access in an under-served region, the rising cost of higher education, and the dilemma of top-flight universities whose quality and prestige are threatened by the state’s continued refusal to provide the funding they need.

A strategic plan would consider, with full understanding of these developments, the needs of all of Virginia’s students and all quarters of the economy for which the state must prepare if it is to remain prosperous. It must be complete, so that the piece of the puzzle represented by each of the state’s two- and four-year colleges fits in to form a whole, a picture that represents where Virginia needs and wants to go with respect to higher education.

And it must address the fundamental questions: Where does Virginia’s commitment to higher education fall within its priorities? In order to serve its students and its economy, what does it need to offer? What does the ideal mix of colleges and programs look like in terms of size, mission and location? Where are there gaps between what is available and what is needed? What will it take to fill those gaps? Are there duplications among colleges, or excess capacity in any sector? Where are the trouble spots in terms of access? Where do private colleges fit into the equation?

This is not about trying to impose centralized control on the state’s colleges and universities. But the proposals on the table could well change the shape of public higher education in Virginia. That shape must not be determined by limited-scale plans tied to the needs of specific schools or regions or short-term political or economic circumstances. These new ideas will serve the state best if they are shaped within a guiding framework that reflects Virginia’s long-term interests.

The state boasts a system of higher education that is one of the finest in the nation. It didn’t become that way by accident, and it won’t stay that way if its future is left to chance or partial solutions dictated by the crisis of the moment.

Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Jeff Shapiro has a piece today on the video Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine has produced.

Opening with an announcer intoning, “Jerry Kilgore is afraid of Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine – and with good reason,” the video cites media accounts critical of the Republican’s performance against Kaine.

At one point, Kilgore is seen rolling his eyes while Kaine, who had accused him of mishandling the GOP eavesdropping scandal, is heard saying, “We’ve got a leadership problem, folks.”

Carrie Cantrell, Kilgore policy director, said, “Generally you try to motivate people on issues and ideas, not negative attacks on those outside your party or inside your party.”

I’ve got to chuckle anytime I hear a Republican decry negative attack ads. If they’re good enough for our president, why aren’t they appropriate for our next governor? And that’s assuming that you think saying “We’ve got a leadership problem” is a negative attack.

But at the “Crossroads of the Blue Ridge”?

Leave it to Jeff Shapiro to point out the GOP’s, shall we say, inconsistency.

According to a recent snapshot, state expenditures ballooned 68 percent from 1994 to 2003. That covers the governorships of Republicans George Allen and Jim Gilmore, the GOP takeover of the General Assembly and the financially austere, do-almost-nothing first half of Democrat Mark R. Warner’s term as chief executive.

Without actually saying it, the assembly’s investigative arm, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, suggests in a widely overlooked report issued Monday that the spending spiral can be attributed to a factor that helped lift the Republican Party to power: a 13 percent increase in population to more than 7 million service-demanding Virginians, many of them suburbanites.

Even when adjusted for inflation, the growth in new spending – 36 percent – remains high. It is important to point out that this occurred before Warner, with succor from centrist Republicans, won $1.4 billion in higher taxes for education, public safety and human services, pushing the current two-year budget to $61 billion.

Despite their sometimes overheated, government-be-damned rhetoric, Republicans, particularly in the conservative House of Delegates, are amassing a record that could make liberal Democrats proud. But it may actually be cause for embarrassment.

For example, in the nine-year period covered by the JLARC analysis, general government spending exploded 108 percent, increasing annually by an average of 8.8 percent. This is more than nuts-and-bolts expenditures, such as paying a work force that’s barely grown, purchasing gasoline for a vast fleet of automobiles and trucks and keeping lights burn- ing in state office buildings.

The two biggest drivers are items that have become synonymous with the Republican ascendancy: the cost of reimbursing localities for lost revenue under the car-tax rollback, and interest payments on state bonds.

This has got to scare you.

The upcoming reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, which dictates how colleges report things such as revenue, tuition and enrollment, has some local college officials concerned.

The Education Department is searching for a way to collect more meaningful and accurate information about colleges. One way to do that, according to the Education Department, is to change the way colleges report information. The agency proposed collecting unit record data and tracking each individual student throughout their career.

…The new reporting system under consideration will track individual students and will keep all records indefinitely. By doing so the department said it can provide the public with more accurate retention and graduation rates, a true cost of higher education and measure colleges’ performance.

…Elisabeth Muhlenfeld, president of Sweet Briar College, agrees with the Education Department that people need to know whether or not colleges are doing what they are supposed to and if they’re efficient or not.

She still has concerns, however.

This legislation “really does raise a big specter of big government tracking students. … It does move us closer to the big brother society,” she said.