My first impression of Kilgore’s transportation proposal to create regional authorities that could tax was favorable, until I read the referendum part of it and that he would fund projects using general funds from the state budget. AP writer Bob Lewis details the problems.

Kilgore and his likely Democratic rival in November, Tim Kaine, support a constitutional amendment to create a “lock box” to shield the Transportation Trust Fund from legislative raids. Lawmakers took money from the fund in 2002 and 2003 to help bail the state out of $6 billion in projected budget shortfalls.

Kilgore, however, advocates using money from the general fund, which pays for such basics as public education, law-enforcement and health care for the aged and needy, to augment transportation. Kaine supports a “two-way lock box” that bars commandeering transportation money for general government operations but also puts the general fund off-limits to transportation. However, Kaine supported using a small portion of this year’s general fund surplus for transportation.

“My commitment is to spend general fund dollars on transportation in the future. We’re seeing huge economic growth in the general fund right now,” Kilgore said.

The state’s monthly revenue collections, fed by a strong economic expansion, are well ahead of their budgeted expectations, creating the prospect that the state will end its fiscal year June 30 with a general fund surplus topping $1.2 billion.

“Instead of creating another program, let’s build another bridge or another road,” Kilgore said.

The weakness of reliance on general funds for road-building is its susceptibility to economic downturns, possibly disrupting money supplies necessary to sustain long-term highway construction plans set six years in advance.

From 2001 to 2004, the Commonwealth Transportation Board slashed its six-year road-building plan by nearly $4 billion, or 38 percent, to accommodate funding shortfalls caused by the recession and by years of substantially underestimated project costs.

Kaine’s folks have a fair response.

Kaine is strongly opposed to tax referendums, saying elected officials should take on such hard decisions themselves. “Jerry Kilgore wants to find a way to govern without exerting leadership,” said DeLacey Skinner, Kaine’s campaign press secretary.

The case echoes that of Terri Schiavo, a Florida woman in a vegetative state whose parents and husband fought over whether she should be allowed to die. She died March 31, almost two weeks after her feeding tube was removed by court order.

Well, not exactly actually. In this case, the parents of a young child want to keep her alive, while doctors claim the infant is in constant pain and petitioned the court to withhold resuscitation, should she again require it.

The parents are clearly the ones empowered to make the decision, but doctors have been allowed by the courts to overrule them.

But here’s what strikes me journalistically about this paragraph: The feeding tube wasn’t “removed by court order.” The court allowed the husband to make a decision to remove the tube. That’s a clear difference, but alas when you have a media that is so patently right-wing biased….

Today’s Variety echoes Karl Rove’s critique of the media as reported in this morning’s Washington Post (see below). Brian Lowry writes,

MUCH HAS BEEN MADE of eroding public trust toward journalists, but those charges too often reference so-called liberal bias when the more insidious problem involves “sensationalism bias” — overreaching to “sell” stories, driven by ambition at the expense of accuracy, potentially alienating all sides of the political spectrum.

Lowry also questions newspapers’ propensity to reverse circulation losses by mimicking TV news to attract a younger reader.

Certainly, broadcast news isn’t garnering much good publicity these days. Skilled practitioners of the craft, including former “Nightline” producer Leroy Sievers and CBS correspondent Tom Fenton, have stepped forward to say what “The Daily Show” demonstrates nightly — that in chasing younger demos, television news has let standards slide, shirked its responsibilities and gone to hell in the proverbial handbasket.

…While I don’t question for a moment the business logic behind tailoring news to suit the next generation, forgive my discomfort as to where that path takes us. Before going further, maybe we need to amend that famous ’60s anti-war slogan a bit — something like, “Don’t trust anyone under 30 — especially if they’re being presented as a model for how to shape the news.”

Thanks to Poynter for the link.

I can’t believe I’m saying this: But I agree with Karl Rove. He was a little too defensive at times, according to this “Washington Sketch” by Dana Milbank, but for the most part, Rove is right on.

“I’m not sure I’ve talked about the liberal media,” Rove said when a student inquired — a decision he said he made “consciously.” The press is generally liberal, he argued, but “I think it’s less liberal than it is oppositional.”

The argument — similar to the one that former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer made in his recent book — is nuanced, nonpartisan and, to the ears of many journalists, right on target. “Reporters now see their role less as discovering facts and fair-mindedly reporting the truth and more as being put on the earth to afflict the comfortable, to be a constant thorn of those in power, whether they are Republican or Democrat,” Rove said.

His indictment of the media — delivered as part of Washington College’s Harwood Lecture Series, named for the late Washington Post editor and writer Richard Harwood — had four parts: that there’s been an explosion in the number of media outlets; that these outlets have an insatiable demand for content; that these changes create enormous competitive pressure; and that journalists have increasingly adopted an antagonistic attitude toward public officials. Beyond that, Rove argued that the press pays too much attention to polls and “horse-race” politics, and covers governing as if it were a campaign.

“If more people in government knew about the press and more people in the press knew about governing, the world would be a better place to live,” Rove said. “Journalists would perform their craft better if they were more understanding of the realities and complexities of running for and serving in public life.”

Offering his critique as a friend of the “indispensable” free press, he argued: “The work journalists do at this time is paradoxically more important than ever, so the need to get it right far more often than they get it wrong is absolutely critical to the function of a free society.”

This guy is getting loopier by the minute.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay intensified his criticism of the federal courts on Tuesday, singling out Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s work from the bench as “incredibly outrageous” because he has relied on international law and done research on the Internet.

DeLay also said he thought there were a “lot of Republican-appointed judges that are judicial activists.”

The No. 2 Republican in the House has openly criticized the federal courts since they refused to order the reinsertion of Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube. And he pointed to Kennedy as an example of Republican members of the Supreme Court who were activist and isolated.

“Absolutely. We’ve got Justice Kennedy writing decisions based upon international law, not the Constitution of the United States? That’s just outrageous,” DeLay told Fox News Radio. “And not only that, but he said in session that he does his own research on the Internet? That is just incredibly outrageous.”

Yeah. He should have just consulted the Bible. No, wait, that, too, would have been his “own research.” I meant Kennedy should have let DeLay do the Bible research. That way Kennedy wouldn’t have to cloud his thinking with nuance. A short pithy interpretation is all that’s needed. Those damn court opinions have gotten too long. Thirty seconds is all one should need to read them.

“In terms of news coverage, all you have to do is look at headlines in papers across the state to see that his name is in the political headlines at least every third or fourth day. This is a considerable advantage to him at this stage in the race, because really, most people, the vast majority of people, aren’t paying close attention right now, but the more his name appears alongside those of Kaine and Kilgore in the headlines, which is all most people are looking at right now in terms of this race, the more credible he is going to be made out to be,” Christopher Newport University political-science professor and political analyst Quentin Kidd told the AFP.

The flip side to the attention being paid to Potts in the news media, Kidd said, is that research has shown that if a concerted effort is made to present a candidate or issue in a negative light, then voters will tend over time to view that candidate or issue in that light.

“That having been said, I’m less inclined right now to believe that this is going to drag Russ down,” Kidd said. “I believe in the end that when you balance out the positive impact of the name recognition that he receives from the mountain of news coverage with the negative tone of the attacks, there will be a net benefit for him in the end.”

Bridgewater College political-science professor and analyst David McQuilkin sees things from a vastly different perspective.

“The easy answer is yes, it will help him. But frankly, he’s being vilified in such a way that I’m not sure the name recognition that he’s gaining will do him a bit of good,” McQuilkin told the AFP.

“I suspect that the longer that he stays in the race, the more vituperative the abuse being heaped upon him will become,” McQuilkin said.

“For the rank-and-file Republicans out there, this is going to be a clear sign to stay away from him. It might help him among moderate Republican voters who decide to vote for him as a protest against the direction that the Republicans are taking the party in. But I don’t see that being significant enough to give him a fighting chance,” McQuilkin said.

So it may help Potts, it may not. And people may be paying attention to the ’05 state race now, they may not be.

Maybe the GOP is on to something. It’s really not necessary to say evil things about Potts, just say he’s more like Kaine. Which “might help him among moderate Republican voters.”

I’m getting more concerned that just maybe Potts does more harm to Kaine than to Kilgore.

www.PrayForTomDeLay.com

Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine’s plan to help local governments reduce taxes on owner-occupied homes received a mostly favorable response Monday night in a town hall-style meeting at the Roanoke Higher Education Center.

But some of the questions the Democratic gubernatorial candidate fielded about his proposal contained hints of skepticism, as audience members wondered whether an effort to reduce the locally imposed real estate tax would merely cause local governments to increase other taxes.

Gee, isn’t it amazing how smart voters can be! While I like any plan that gives localities more control over their own destinies, probably the second best thing you can say about Kaine’s real estate tax proposal is that, fortunately, Kilgore has one, too. Let’s hope they cancel each other out.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, under an ethical cloud in recent months, has told supporters that he has “never been found to have violated any law or rule by anyone.”

In a mailing made public Monday, the Texas Republican’s campaign added a defiant rebuttal to the letter, saying, “Democrats have made clear that their only agenda is the politics of personal destruction, and the criminalization of politics.

Criminalization of politics? That’s like saying the agenda is the vilification of the devil.

The politics of personal destruction also goes by “the impeachment of Bill Clinton.”

Even Jim Gilmore has his own think tank.

More than 400 politicians, lobbyists and former members of Gilmore’s administration packed a hotel ballroom Saturday night for the inaugural dinner of Americans for Freedom and Opportunity. Gilmore (R) is the founder and chairman of the nonprofit group, which has said it will engage in “policy discussions and persuasion.”

“We are going to find ways to advance the cause of justice and goodness for the people of Virginia and the nation,” Gilmore vowed in a speech to the group.

The invitation for the fundraiser makes plain the philosophy that will drive Gilmore’s organization: “Too often,” it says, “the liberal media, the special interests and some politicians of both parties combine to frustrate the will of the people.”

Gilmore’s former chief of staff, M. Boyd Marcus, said the organization will try to spark discussion in Virginia and across the nation about issues that the former governor especially cares about.

“We are looking at policy development, particularly focusing on reforms on taxes and spending,” Marcus said. “One of the themes the governor is going to be talking about is that the middle class is getting squeezed pretty hard.”

How are the Dems building an intellectual case for their party?