Will It Be A Wave?

So yeah, I’m finishing up my last year of law school, taking a couple classes, representing a criminal defendant in Rockville for Criminal Justice Clinic, working part-time at a firm in Fairfax, trying to keep up with some Democratic party duties, and all the while we’re going to have a baby any day now. Those are my excuses.

But I found a few minutes this morning and I’d like to riff off of something Ben posted this morning. Ben has posted his early predictions for the legislative elections and they look awfully weird to me. They’re weird because all the talk I’ve heard and all the polling I’ve seen indicate that this election is shaping up as a wave. It’s clear that Ben is not reading this election as a wave. In fact, his prediction has barely changed in months. Sure- his predictions point to a successful year for Democrats, but nothing spectacular. A wave is something different. A wave is when bad candidates, vastly outmatched candidates, and candidates in awful districts, win. A wave brings in not only those toss-up competitive races in Democratic-trending districts with sufficiently financed candidates that Ben didn’t include like Barker and Janet, it also sweeps in people like Donahue, Brown, Pollard, Del Toro, Brennan, Rishell, Martinez, Bouchard and Schultz.

Will it be a wave? My thinking right now is yes.

I’m Back

I’m back from vacation and much more caught up on everything that piled up while I was gone. So, first my summary of what happened while I was gone:

• Romney won the straw poll. I think this DOES have significance no matter the spin, no matter how much he paid per vote.
• Rove dropped out of the WH. I wonder if this was push (looming DOJ scandal) or pull (big offer from a WH hopeful). I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

August is again a slow month. Did I miss anything else?

The FCC Opens Up A Small Piece of The Airwaves

Under the pressure of an intense lobbying effort by content providers, namely Google, the FCC voted today to require the winning bidder on a newly available slice of sky to permit “open access”. This should allow for other companies to offer services and content without having to go through one or another major cellphone company. With this renewed competition, innovative companies like Google can, in fact, offer their services in a wireless format right alongside them.

Though the FCC could and should have gone farther and allowed “wholesale” access like they once did with land-based telephone networks- this is a great first step to break the stranglehold these 2-3 companies hold over both the consumer electronics and software industries. This should be a first step toward a revolutionary change, particularly in the ways we use the internet.

Phew

My neighborhood was at risk of getting seriously screwed up if the Army hadn’t at least partially come to their senses.

Down from about 22,000 new neighbors to about 12,000. We still need Metro to Belvoir and Lorton…

This is What I’m Talking About

This is an example of why I support John Edwards for President.

Edwards will help regular families save and get ahead by:

• Creating a Get Ahead Credit, which will expand the Savers Credit to match savings up to $500 a year, providing as much as an additional dollar for every dollar of savings.
• Boosting low-income families’ savings with work bonds, which will supplement the Earned Income Tax Credit to match the savings of low-income workers up to $500 per year.
• Exempting from taxes each family’s first $250 in interest, capital gains, and dividends.
• Allowing families to deposit part or all of their child tax credit into a tax-free savings account.
• Expanding the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit to pay up to 50 percent of child care expenses up to $5,000 and make it partially refundable to benefit low-income working families.
• Tripling the EITC for 4 million adults without children and cutting the marriage penalty for 3 million families.

Time after time, while others have talked a good game, on the issues that really matter to people that are struggling, Edwards has pushed forth concrete proposals. Keep making me proud Johnny Reid!

Thompson The Entitled Hollywood Star

I resisted the urge to malign Fred Thompson’s self-indulgent roll-out because of my political admiration of how well executed it has been, but every day that passes where he does not make his campaign “official” enhances an already-developing negative image of him.

This is a guy who always wants the easy way and expects the star treatment. From what I can tell, he’s not announcing apparently for two reasons: 1) because he doesn’t want to be bothered with talking to real people. Once he announces he no longer has any excuse for shunning real retail politics for web videos and fundraisers. Remember this juicy excerpt:

Thompson also is interested in using the Internet and a limited number of large rally-type events as a way of avoiding the traditional, full-time, retail-style campaigning in Iowa, New Hampshire and other early contest states used by all the other hopefuls. Thompson wants to run “a low-impact presidential campaign,” reported the newspaper. “You show up, you’re accessible, but you don’t have to go to every county seat several times,” said one Thompson adviser. “He doesn’t have to go diner to diner and church to church,” said another adviser. Those comments seem to peg Thompson’s attitude pretty accurately. “Going on the road for months at a time … I wouldn’t do that. I don’t think it has to be done that way. I know people will expect that of everyone — to run frenetically around for years — and I don’t do frenetic very well,” Thompson told FOX News. Via MC, the #1 Thompson worshipper.

Gross! You want me to shake hands with hundreds of unwashed commoners?

And 2) he wants to maximize the money for himself and his Hollywood friends. Word is that because of the FCC’s equal time rules, re-runs featuring Thompson can’t run once he’s officially announced. The current NBC schedule has re-runs going till September 1st. That’s money that Thompson, the pampered star and former lobbyist, just can’t say no to.  So of course, the rumored announcement date is September 4.

Yes, the Republicans are once again in the position of choosing between two entitled snob-types: Mitt Romney, blue-blood, uber-wealthy, son of a Governor & Fred Thompson, Hollywood elite and millionaire lobbyist. Ah, to be Republican.

Tim Kaine

1. Estate tax repeal
2. 2007 transportation silence
3. Regional taxing authorities
4. MIA on Tysons Tunnel
5. Abuser fees

Faulty Assumptions

The old truism of “garbage in, garbage out” rings truer in politics and public policy than anywhere. Too often bad policy is driven by misguided principles or faulty assumptions. Take a look at the transportation bill debacle (which has created unelected taxing authorities, outrageous “abuser fees”, and unprecedented debt) as a prime example.

The primary assumptions that drove the funding discussion in Virginia were (and continue to be) that:

1) transportation should be funded by transportation-related revenue sources,
2) the areas of the state that directly benefit from transportation improvement should bear a greater burden, and
3) fees are preferable to taxes.

Each point elegant and compelling. And that’s precisely why they’ve cut through to inflict such devastation on the process. They read as simple, common-sense fact, rather than an argument begging for a very specific outcome. But allow me to take them on in turn:

No Gas Tax

With the closest thing you’ll ever see to consensus in Virginia politics the abuser fees provisions are very likely to be repealed in the next session. Now, as Chap asks, what are we going to replace that funding stream with?

There are a number of options including an increase in the income tax, sales tax, a renewed estate tax, gas tax, user fees, etc. (I’d be interested to see what the revenue and distribution effects would be if we raised the threshold for the top rate from $17,000 to $40,000 and simultaneously raised that rate from 5.75% to 6%- cutting taxes by .75% for all dollars earned between $5K-$40K, and raising taxes by .25% for all dollars earned over $40K.)

My first plea is for the leaders of the commonwealth to avoid what seems, at first blush, like an elegant solution: the gas tax. As I recently reported, the last several years have seen a promising revival of tax fairness. We’ve moved from having one of the most burdensome tax systems for the working poor to around average in the country over the past 7 years.

Why would we strengthen the flat tax aspects of our tax scheme now?

Paying for Roads with $3,000 Traffic Tickets

That phrase is going to be heard a lot between now and election day. Why? Because it truly represents the screwy compromise that is this transportation bill and, even more, it epitomizes the screwy ideology that rules the roost in Richmond. The weird public policy results directly from the fact that the decision-makers – people like Ken Cuccinelli, Jay O’Brien, and Jeannemarie Devolites-Davis – are beholden to a narrow ideological set that demands fealty to the catechism of weakened government and “no new taxes”.

Of course, these fantasy-land agendas clearly don’t pan out in reality (or we would have NO transportation legislation). I wrote earlier about the Cuccinelli and O’Brien apostasy against the Norquist cult. So, in their cheap effort to disguise that apostasy yet cling to electability, we’re left with a bill that is more concerned with political appearances and CYA than with rational, stable, and transparent funding.

Good government is what’s at stake this November.