Virginia House shoots down plea to ‘save’ arts

At first I thought the quote marks around ‘save’ were sarcastic. By the time I realized they weren’t, I felt too depressed to read on. I’m guessing the article says the Virginia Commission for the Arts won’t exist for very much longer. My money is on early 2011 for its ultimate demise. Maybe we can set up some system of futures trading wherein gamblers wager on what specific date various government services will go kaput, thus earning funds that the state could use to, I don’t know, ban gay highway adoptions, except of course that the House “eschews new money.” (This last phrase according to another article about budget plans that I also felt too depressed to read. I skimmed through it and got snagged on “eschews new money,” which has a catchy internal rhyme, although the philosophy is flawed. I’d prefer that the Republican majority cue new money or pursue new money, but then I suppose they wouldn’t be Republicans.)

House kills clothesline bill OK’d by Va. Senate

This story has garnered fifteen times as many comments as the article about saving the arts. Of course, it’s hard to tell what exact time these articles were posted, and perhaps the clothesline piece has been festering online a little longer than the arts piece. Just in case, let me compare it to a story from Thursday headlined “Cuts will hinder schools.” In that article, Norfolk Superintendent Stephen Jones is quoted as saying that the cuts “will disadvantage our children for the next decade.” Number of comments? Two. Number of comments on the clotheslines? I stopped counting after twenty. Does it make me out of synch with the average Pilot reader to care more about protecting K-12 education from crippling cuts than about whether community associations can ban clotheslines?

Perilous times for Virginia’s arts

This excellent editorial, which decries the House plan to cut arts funding, has no comments either. If I were a hacker, I’d cut some of the more generally worded clothesline comments and paste them here, verbatim, to create the illusion of outrage.

Va. pitches $75 million plan for train to Richmond

This isn’t high-speed rail, but rather improvements to the existing Norfolk Southern track that could get us passenger train service between Norfolk and Richmond in—get this—three years. By 2013 we could be boarding trains at Harbor Park (where a light-rail station is currently under construction) or at Bowers Hill in Chesapeake and riding them non-stop to Washington and New York. (I recently rode the train to New York from Newport News for the first time and found the experience to be exquisitely delightful. If monthly rail passes were affordable, I’d buy them every month so I could use Amtrak trains as my office for writing.) Facilities would still need to be built at those two locations, though, which is one of many reasons why three years seems optimistic. If my aforementioned futures trading on government actions plan comes to pass in Virginia, my money’s on 2017 for the year when the first passenger train will pull out of the station. It usually takes about three years just to widen a street.

This futures market, by the way, this isn’t far-fetched; you can go right now to Intrade.com and bet—or “invest”—in things like “Ron Paul to be Republican Presidential Nominee in 2012” (buy at 4.4, sell at 4.0), “Dow today to close higher than previous close” (buy at 62.5, sell at 60.5), and “Obamacare to become law before midnight ET 30 Jun 2010” (buy at 49.8, sell at 44.0). These numbers are percentages out of one hundred, and they represented the likelihood of the stated possibility’s coming to pass. According to InTrade, Andrew Garcia has a twenty-percent shot at winning American Idol, Tiger Woods has a forty-one percent shot of playing in a PGA Tour event before April 30, and the Higgs Boson particle has a twenty-nine percent chance of being observed before 31 December 2013. (Which will happen first: observation of the Higgs Boson particle, or passenger rail in Norfolk?) So this isn’t a new idea on my part; the only radical aspect to it is that I urge the Commonwealth of Virginia to set up a website like Intrade for predicting events in Virginia, such as nor’easters and hurricanes and accusations by Pat Robertson that gays or devil-worship or abortions has caused those nor’easters and hurricanes.

One more thing: money for this passenger rail service would come from “an existing pool of state money that comes from a tax on rental cars.” I like trains, so I don’t want to poop on this passenger rail plan, but how many other “pool[s] of state money” are lying around waiting for $75-million infrastructure proposals? Can someone please enumerate the pools of money? If there’s a tax on rental cars that creates deep reservoirs of unused revenue (I guess this is why a rental car that says it costs $19.95 winds up costing about thirty-eight dollars), what else can we tax? Regular cars? Why not charge a progressive tax on license plate tag renewals? My car cost $3,500 eight years ago, so I’d pay about three dollars, whereas the driver of a new Mercedes would pay about five hundred dollars. Onward and upward with the arts.

Don’t yield—yet—to nuclear option

This mealy-mouthed editorial spends most of its time vaguely admonishing Republican filibusters before shifting gears and opining that “reconciliation” (the quote marks here really are scare quotes) is deeply dangerous and was “never intended to be used on contentious legislation.” Maybe the quote marks are meant to distract readers from the meaning of reconciliation. In a bicameral legislature the House drafts bills and votes on them and the Senate drafts similar but separate bills and votes on them. The bills are then reconciled. (That article I referred to about the Virginia House and Senate budget plans that need to be merged? That will be a reconciliation of those budget bills.) The U.S. House has passed a health-care bill. Two hundred and twenty representatives voted for it. The U.S. Senate has passed a health-care bill. Sixty senators voted for it. This Pilot editorial begins by saying, “Understanding the arcane rules of the U.S. Senate can take time,” but understanding what I’ve described here takes about three minutes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEJL2Uuv-oQ

New goal for replacement of Jordan Bridge: 2011

A private “development team” called Figg Bridge Developers is replacing the Jordan Bridge for $100 million. Linda Figg of Figg Bridge (now there’s a rhyme) “said financing for the project is solid but declined to name investors.” Why can’t she name investors? Why is her company paying $100 million to replace the Jordan Bridge? How are they allowed to impose a two-dollar toll to “generate profits?” Can I build a bridge and start charging a toll there, as long as I convince secret investors it’s a good idea? The article states that a major investor has pulled out but quotes Figg as saying others are lined up. She refuses again to name them. Figg (or perhaps her firm; it’s hard to tell from the wording) will own the bridge outright, which seems odd. I Googled her and learned that she and her firm have donated generously to McCain/Palin, Bush/Cheney, multiple Republican senators, and the Alaska-based Midnight Sun Political Action Committee, whose name I know from when Jack Abramoff was in the papers. If I recall correctly, they supported lots of hugely anti-gay right-wingers like Marilyn Musgrave and Tom Tancredo. Maybe Figg gave to Midnight Sun PAC in the hope of getting a contract in Alaska to build the Bridge to Nowhere, but I’m not the hard-boiled investigative reporter type; I prefer shotgun sprays of innuendo. Incidentally, I never once crossed the Jordan Bridge before it was condemned, and I doubt I’ll be using the new one.

Weather: Cold temps will feel colder with wind

Some weathermen think they’re Nostradamus or something.