Politics: Weakness in the Commonwealth

Sure, I'll admit that I like, as a resident of the Commonwealth of Virginia, having two Senators and a Representative with three votes in Congress. It's one of the perks, I guess, of living in one of the fifty states, and not in, say the District of Columbia, which embarrassingly remains without any voting representative (or statehood, but that's another story). But the Commonwealth remains a conservative bastion of close-mindedness, and the commitment of liberals in Virginia to fight that from within can sometimes be frustrating.

This is one of those times.

First the immediately bad news: Virginia Governor Mark Warner(D), was unable to amend two laws passed by the General Assembly this term. As a result, both the laws will go into effect on July 1, and both will limit a woman's right to reproductive freedom. One law required notarized parental consent for a minor seeking an abortion. Another law bans what its supporters stupidly call 'partial birth infanticide.' The notary requirement will add days to the already unacceptable delay engendered by the law if a minor has need of reproductive health services. And don't even get me started on the idiocy of the second law. Suffice it to say that Governor Warner attempted to strip the notary provision in one bill and add a 'health of the mother' provision to the other, and failed on both counts. I know, it's disgusting. Read:

Conservative lawmakers said the ban on late-term procedures would stop physicians from performing an unknown number of abortions. And they said the parental consent bill will decrease by thousands the number of abortions in the state.

"This is the most profound bill we will have considered in a number of years," said Del. Richard H. Black (R-Loudoun). "We will reduce abortion by 6,000 each year.

I'm sick.

There are about two dozen terrible things about this legislative session, working down in severity from these abominable restrictions on a woman's right to choose. Warner did manage to veto a repeal of the estate tax, striking a blow to obnoxious millionaires interested in keeping their unbelievable largess beyond the grave, I assume. Warner's moronic veto of the equally sh*t-headed "Choose Life" Virginia license plate demonstrated just how incredibly inane state-level government can be.

But the biggest item on the agenda in Virginia is the staggering financial crisis left behind by Warner's Republican successor, Jim Gilmore. Gilmore, see, repealed the dreaded 'car tax,' after running his whole campaign on a pledge to do so. Basically, people in Virginia so hate the personal property tax on vehicles that they would have voted for Fozzie the f*ckin' Bear if he promised to repeal it. Needless to say, the boom ended, the bust set in, and by the time Warner was running for the Governor's mansion in 2001, Gilmore's heir apparent was trying to defend a hysterically fiscally unstable administration, and Warner, a pro-business centrist democrat, beat the republican soundly.

Of course, Warner has spent the two years since and will spend the three years ahead digging himself out of the financial hole Gilmore left behind, and in the process he will veto tax cuts (like the estate tax mentioned above), tighten belts and cut spending everywhere else. In the end he will balance the state's budget. This will make him incredibly unpopular with the voters of Virginia, with whom I am woefully out of step. They will then vote for whatever republican promises to, say, repeal the state income tax, or move the capitol from Richmond to a tax shelter in the Bahamas, or give every registered voter a dollar and a lollipop. That republican will cut taxes and dig a huge financial hole and five years later...see above. Cunning strategy, isn't it?