( – promoted by lowkell)

…and on three Virginia politicians who are obstacles to protecting our climate

One of my favorite movies is Groundhog Day, where Bill Murray, in the role an arrogant jerk he plays so well, is doomed to repeat his day over and over until he learns to grow up and reform his surly, self-centered behavior.  

It’s a lot like too many of our public officials’ attitude toward climate change. Compelling science, one devastating storm after another, repeated droughts, floods, and wildfires, and still too many politicians refuse to appreciate that our dependence on fossil fuels is disrupting of our climate.  

Consider three current examples from Virginia.

Most notorious is Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a climate science denier who has abused his office and taxpayers’ money to sue the US EPA challenging established climate science. Just as outrageous was his lawsuit against the University of Virginia alleging that respected climate scientist Michael Mann defrauded the public by using state research resources to study climate change. Because Cuccinelli is an engineer as well as an attorney he believes he has special insight into the science of climate change even though he doesn’t understand the difference between weather and climate. Consider his email to his supporters on Feb 8, 2010 right after he was sworn in as Virginia’s Attorney General that starts out: “Dear Fellow Virginians, As I look out the window at 30+ inches of global snowing…”

Delegate Scott Lingamfelter, announced Republican candidate to replace Cuccinelli as our Attorney General, is another climate denier. Apparently, he actually believes the Tea Party claptrap that the United Nations is secretly conspiring to deny the property rights of American citizens by advancing Agenda 21 and using climate change as an excuse to crush Americans’ liberty. What is Agenda 21, you may ask? I suggest you Google it as you would not believe me if told you what the Tea Party has to say about it. You should definitely read Delegate Lingamfelter’s HJR 654 as well.  

The Tea Party has such a hold on the Republican House of Delegates that 8 of them as well as two Democrats (Joannou and Johnson) actually voted to report HJR 654 out of the House Rules committee and the resolution goes to floor this week.  To his credit Republican House Speaker Bill Howell voted “Nay” but 10 of his colleagues on House Rules either believe this craziness or are too intimidated by the Tea Party to tell them their Agenda 21 conspiracy is loony.

As embarrassing as it may be to have Attorney General Cuccinelli and Delegate Lingamfelter representing our state, at least they actually seem to believe the claptrap they spew.

In some ways more shameful is Senate Democratic Leader Richard Saslaw, who consistently votes with the fossil fuel industry, including Dominion Virginia Power, which in return showers financial tribute on his Political Action Committee. Senator Saslaw, as the lead Democrat on the Senate Commerce and Labor Committee, uses his position to kill legislation to advance wind, solar and energy efficiency in Virginia. Not only does Senator Saslaw insure that Dominion is not required to invest in clean power, he regularly kills legislation on behalf of Dominion to stifle competition from businesses that are willing and able to provide clean energy and clean energy jobs to Virginians.  

Because the Sierra Club has stood up to this first class bully and suggested that Fairfax County voters deserve better, he has issued to his Senate colleagues a political fatwa that no one should work with the Sierra Club. He has attempted to enforce his fatwa with stated and implied threats that colleagues working with the Sierra Club will see their bills die or that they may be denied campaign funds from Senator Saslaw’s PAC war chest filled with booty from Virginia’s biggest polluters, uranium mining interests and the usurious pay day lending money changers at the Temple of the Virginia Statehouse.

Fortunately, most Virginians and most Americans understand that climate change is a real threat to our future wellbeing and to the wellbeing of our children. We want our leaders to take action now to rein in carbon pollution. By acting sooner rather than later we can address this environmental challenge in a manner that strengthens our economy and our security even if the quarterly profits and shareholder dividends of fossil fuel dinosaurs like Dominion Virginia Power may suffer.  

So on this Groundhog Day, if we renew our pledge to combat climate change and to hold politicians like Cuccinelli, Saslaw and Lingamfelter accountable, we can look forward to future Feb 2nds, when Punxsutawney Phil and his furry compatriots can credibly predict six more weeks of winter when they see their shadows.  Let’s get started!

Glen Besa is Virginia Director of the Sierra Club.  The Sierra Club, working with a broad coalition of groups to organize the largest rally for action on climate in US history on February 17 in Washington, DC.  For details, click here.  

Here are a few Virginia (and national) news headlines, political and otherwise, for Saturday, February 2. Also see President Obama’s weekly address, asking Congress “to work together on a balanced approach to reduce our deficit and promote economic growth and job creation.”

*Ezra Klein: To Fix the U.S. Economy, Fix Immigration

*Scott Brown will not run for US Senate (OK, now we should – and had better! – be able to hold this seat.)

*Hillary Clinton bids the State Department farewell

*Two Charts That Make The Case For More Infrastructure Spending

*The GOP’s bad fixes to the electoral college

*Cuccinelli received $30,000 advance for book (Since he used a state employee to help him write the book, he should return that $30,000 to the taxpayers of Virginia.)

*Ware won’t support GOP Senate redistricting plan

*Republican’s bill limiting forms of voter ID heads to floor

*Jeb Bush promotes McDonnell school grading plan (How silly; with out-of-control “grade inflation,” letter grades these days are pretty much meaningless anyway, so what good are they?)

*Va. Senate OKs Two Term Governors (“Sen. Bryce Reeves (R-17) voted for the measure, which now goes before the House of Delegates”)

*Senate Democrats don’t use advantage to kill drug testing bill (So…Republicans declare war on us, and we turn the other cheek? Hmmmm.)

*House panel endorses grounding of drone aircraft

*Uranium ban to remain in place (“For now.”)

*House GOP backs funding for security officers in schools

*Cuccinelli closes investigation of voter fraud allegations against Moran

*Virginia Senate panel rejects lawmaker travel restriction (Lame.)

*Talks heat up once again on downtown Norfolk conference center

*D.C. area forecast: Mostly miniature snow threats line up one after another

( – promoted by lowkell)

Virginia Republican legislative initiatives have earned the Commonwealth unpleasant nationwide (and global) attention in recent years.  Whether the abuse of public resources to undermine Virginia’s academic reputation with anti-science legal shenanigans (2010 to present); the social, moral, and medical outrage of trying to require unnecessary ultrasounds on women seeking to execute their Constitutional right to control their own medical destinies (2012); or the anti-democratic efforts to redistrict (out-of-cycle) to manipulate the Commonwealth’s Senate districts and to shift the Electoral College votes from Virginia to skew away from voters’ intent, Virginia’s GOP has provided lots of substantive reasons for intensely outraged attention to their anti-science, anti-constitutional rights, and anti-democratic tendencies.

These flashpoint issues have masked other serious issues. While the threat to the Electoral College and the legislation to redistrict the Commonwealth’s Senate seats are capturing the majority of attention, Governor Bob McDonnell’s very troubling and damaging transportation proposal is receiving minimal (if any) national attention.  

And, this matters.  

For example, McDonnell’s (damaging, non-sensical, backwards moving, etc …) proposal to eliminate the Commonwealth’s tax on gasoline would make Virginia unique of the 50 states in not having a user tax on fuel to help pay for transportation costs.  With polluter interests heavily behind this, it is not hard to imagine that having this become law in Virginia will quickly become leveraged for legislative action across the nation.  We will have a shift from the lunacy of 2008’s discussion of a “gas tax holiday” to a nationwide call by the “Drill, Baby, Drill” crowd for “No Gas Tax”.  This bad policy, damaging on fiscal and environmental grounds, will resonate politically and must be snuffed out at its source before it becomes a conflagration flaring up in state after state.

Within McDonnell’s plan are a litany of problems such that discussing them takes more pages than the (long) proposal itself and thus they merit addressing one after another (after another after another after …) in separate discussions.  This post thus turns to a one particular angle of consideration of one of the bad proposals in the bill:  Bob’s punitive $100 fee on alternative fuel vehicles.  While the full section is after the fold, here are the key points:

While the governor’s plan will eliminate the Virginia gasoline tax, the federal gas tax of 18.5 cents will remain. The majority of federal gas tax revenues are returned to the states for transportation projects, and Virginia typically receives approximately $1 billion per year in federal gas tax revenue. And the more alternative fuel vehicles on the road, the less of a share Virginia will get of that federal tax.

Therefore, the governor’s plan proposes an additional $100 fee for alternative fuel vehicles to ensure that these drivers continue to contribute to Virginia’s transportation networks, which they use every day.

>While there has been real outcries about this ridiculous fee on alternative fuel vehicles/hybrids — where there is a “user fee” imposed on hybrid drivers (that is unassociated with actual use) while removing the major user fee (gasoline taxes) — this fee is truly reminiscent of the “New Math” craze …

Join me after the fold to look at how Bob makes Tom Lehrer proud.

Let’s work through this …

• A hybrid vehicle is roughly 25% more efficient than its equivalent non-hybrid.
  
  • The Prius is 50 miles per gallon.
  • A ‘non-hybrid’ version might be about 40 miles per gallon.
  • Thus, the difference between a high-end hybrid and the equivalent non-hybrid, mile driven, is roughly 1/5th the level of tax.

• $100 fee against the 18.5 cent federal gas tax.
  
  • At 18.5 cents, it is 5.4 gallons per $1.00.
  • To achieve $100 requires buying 540 gallons of fuel.
    
    • At 40 mpg, this would translate to 21,600 miles of driving.
    • At 50 mpg, this would translate to 27,000 miles of driving

• Looking at differential in another angle, the difference is 1/5 of the gas tax
  
  • For having a hybrid car rather than non-hybrid, the Prius (or Ford Fusion C-Max or …) would have to drive five times as far to meet the $100 savings.
  • E.g., the Prius driver would have to drive 135,000 miles in order to meet the $100 difference between owning a hybrid and a non-hybrid vehicle
  • That 135,000 miles represents roughly 10 years of driving.

Governor McDonnell seeks to justify a punitive $100 fee on alternative-fueled vehicles due to the asserted loss of gasoline taxes. The “lost” gasoline taxes represent roughly the lost gas tax equivalent of 10 average driving — are you starting to feel like Governor McDonnell is lost within New Math?

And, the Governor’s “New Math” has yet another problem in its logic.  The Commonwealth of Virginia imposes a three percent sales and transfer tax on vehicles.  “Generally, a hybrid vehicle can be as much as 20 percent more expensive than its counterpart powered by a conventional gasoline engine.”  Thus, a new Prius might cost $24,000 when an equivalent quality, fuel-efficient non-hybrid would run perhaps $20,000.  Thus, the hybrid owner pays $120 in additional tax which, again, represents more than 10 years of lost gasoline taxes.

Governor McDonnell’s transportation has a section, beginning on page two, entitled: “Math Problem Background”.

As the example provided here shows, the reality is that Gov. McDonnell’s wrong-headed transportation concept is filled with problem math used to support problematic policy constructs.

Note, a group of hybrid drivers protested in Richmond yesterday:

“I invested in a hybrid car to do my part to make the air we breathe cleaner and our climate safer,” said Chester resident Laurel Snode, owner of a hybrid Honda Insight and a participant in the car parade. “We wouldn’t tax non-smokers to fund more public ash trays. Punishing Virginians who want to be part of the solution and pollute less makes absolutely no sense. It will only do more harm.”

From Sen. Herring's office: 

HERRING HEALTH EXCHANGE BILL PASSES SENATE

Receives Broad Bi-Partisan Support; Obenshain Leads Charge To Defeat It

Leesburg – Today, the Senate passed bipartisan legislation offered by Democratic candidate for Attorney General State Senator Mark Herring (Loudoun & Fairfax) will protect Virginia consumers and give them greater access to affordable healthcare by helping to establish a federal health exchange in the Commonwealth.  
 
SB 922, chief co-patroned by Senator Herring (Republican Senator John Watkins (Powhatan) was the patron), passed the Senate 31-8.  The bill would allow Virginia to implement the Affordable Care Act by authorizing the State Corporation Commission and Virginia Department of Health to perform rate review and plan management functions to certify health benefit plans for participation in the new health exchange.

Starting in 2014, over 500,000 Virginians will gain access to health insurance through the exchange.
 
“Today’s bipartisan passage of a health exchange bill marks a victory for Virginia families and a defeat for those who would put ideology ahead of solutions.   Now that the Affordable Care Act is the law of the land, Virginia must implement it in a way that works for the people of our state by expanding coverage and expanding consumer safeguards, which this bill does,” Herring stated.  “While Senator Obenshain might think following in Ken Cuccinelli’s footsteps is good politics, these kind of ideological battles only make things tougher for Virginia families, when our job should be making their lives easier.”

Additional Herring Bills Pass Senate
 
SB 706, also chief co-patroned by Senator Herring, passed the Senate 39-0. The bill would make it a felony to knowingly financially exploit an older or incapacitated adult.  
 

Senator Herring has led the effort in the General Assembly for several years on the issue of financial elder abuse working with a coalition of groups including the Fairfax County Financial Crimes Division, AARP, Alzheimer’s organizations, Commonwealth’s Attorneys and concerned citizens.
 
“When I began this effort in 2009, we found that Virginia’s laws were among the weakest in the nation at protecting older Virginians from financial abuse,” Herring stated. “Criminals are actually coming to Virginian to prey on our seniors and we cannot tolerate that any longer.” 

Also passing the Senate today, on a 39-0 vote, was SB 1083 to criminalize newly identified chemical compounds of “bath salts.”
 
“Designer drugs like bath salts continue to threaten the health and safety of our young people in Virginia,” Herring stated. “We must remain vigilant in giving law enforcement and prosecutors the tools they need to go after them as criminals who create new compounds designed to skirt our laws.”

Yet again, Bob McDonnell speaks with forked tongue.

McDonnell said that if his proposed $56 car registration fee is approved, Virginia’s annual registration costs would still be “equal to or lower than” most states. The governor’s office, when asked, offers no proof to this claim.

Information from AAA and the National Conference of State Legislatures shows the governor is wrong. Under McDonnell’s plan, Virginia’s registration would be higher than 28 states and lower than seven. The 14 other states have variables in their formulas for computing car registration fees that could result in charges that are higher or lower than the $56 McDonnell has proposed.

The bottom line is that Virginia would have a higher car registration fee than most states. McDonnell’s claim has no basis and we give it our lowest rating, Pants on Fire.

Of course, this “Pants on Fire” rating shouldn’t be particularly surprising for Bob McDonnell, given that only 44% of his rated statements have been completely or “mostly true.” The rest? Half truths, mostly false, false, or “pants on fire.” I’d also point out that McDonnell hasn’t been rated by PolitiFact on his laughable assertion that his transportation plan would be “revenue neutral.” Clearly, that’s another “Pants on Fire” just waiting for PolitiFact to dust off the fiery graphic! 🙂

The following press release is from Progress Virginia. Why would lawmakers vote to keep the public from knowing who they're taking money and gifts from? It's hard to imagine a GOOD reason for wanting to hide that information.

SB1143 would increase disclosure over legislative junkets, ALEC meetings

Richmond, VA – This morning, members of the Virginia Senate Rules Committee voted to pass by indefinitely SB1143, which would increase disclosure over taxpayer-funded legislative junkets. Specifically, legislators would no longer be able to use public funds to attend conferences if the conference agenda and materials are not available to the public. Senators Louise Lucas and Janet Howell voted no on the motion to pass by indefinitely.

Senator Steve Martin, who has spent over $22,000 of public funds to attend American Legislative Exchange Council conferences (an organization for which he serves as State Chair), made the motion to kill the bill.

Anna Scholl, Executive Director of ProgressVA, commented on the vote. “Transparency and disclosure have always been the bottom line of Virginia government. It's disappointing so many Senators would refuse to increase disclosure over how public funds are being spent. Constituents should absolutely be able to find out what's going on behind closed doors, especially when our tax dollars are subsidizing the meeting.”

According to a 2012 report from ProgressVA, legislators have spent over $230,000 of taxpayer funds attending American Legislative Exchange Council conferences. Those meetings, at which legislators meet with lobbyists to draft and vote on model legislation, are closed to the public. ALEC declines to release task force agendas and materials to the public. Those materials are also technically exempt from Virginia's Freedom of Information Act, under the “working papers” exemption.

Five ALEC members sit on the Senate Rules Committee and have spent taxpayer dollars to attend their conferences. All five voted to kill SB1143.

• Senator Ryan McDougle: Member, ALEC Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force. Spent $701 of public funds on ALEC meetings
• Senator Steve Martin: ALEC State Chair. Spent $22,061 of public funds on ALEC meetings
• Senator Steve Newman: Member, ALEC Education Task Force. Spent $7627 of public funds on ALEC meetings
• Senator Frank Ruff: Member, ALEC Commerce, Insurance, and Economic Development Task Force. Spent $17,439 of public funds on ALEC meetings
• Senator Frank Wagner: Member, ALEC Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force. Spent $6,585 of public funds on ALEC meetings.

Source: ProgressVA 2012 ALEC in Virginia report. www.progressva.org/alec

( – promoted by lowkell)

by Anne Bacon as published in The Winchester Star Open Forum 1/29/13

Sen. Jill Vogel posted a legislative update recently, detailing many issues before her in the state Senate. But I was interested to see what she didn’t say. I find sometimes what people don’t tell you is as telling as what they do.

Mrs. Vogel made no report on the failed repeal of her legislation introduced last year that mandatespregnant women undergo a medically unnecessary and invasive transvaginal ultrasound.

Yes, Mrs. Vogel was the author of that bill. While her legislation was later amended to require the less-invasive transabdominal ultrasound, efforts to repeal the legislation altogether have already been defeated by the legislature this year. As it stands, thanks to Sen. Vogel, women in crisis will still be subjected to a medically unnecessary and expensive procedure for at least another year.

Virginia ranks 40th nationally for women serving in the legislature – the Center for American Women and Politics bases these rankings on women elected to office regardless of party. While women make up 50 percent of the population, only 17 percent of the legislature is women.

Instead of standing up for women, I was disappointed to find that Sen. Vogel stood lock-step with the men of the Republican caucus and did not sign on as a co-patron to SB789, a bill that would have required equal pay for equal work for women. In 2013, women make, on average, just 77 cents for each dollar that men earn. Had Sen. Vogel signed on as a co-patron to this bill, she would have signaled her recognition of this inequality that affects many two paycheck households in this region.

Mrs. Vogel didn’t mention that she voted to kill a number of measures aimed at easing long lines on Election Day; she voted to kill legislation that would have kept polls open just one hour later (SB964). She also voted against a more comprehensive bill to ease voter wait times and make it easier to vote (SB1062).

Regarding gun safety, she failed to mention she had already voted to kill a bill that would have kept better track of where guns are going in Virginia by creating a penalty for a nonlicensed gun dealer to sell a gun to another nonlicensed gun dealer (SB1136).

She also voted against banning the sale of high-capacity ammunition, or semi-automatic weapon magazines, like those used in the tragedy at Newtown last month (SB1148).

While Sen. Vogel reports on a host of issues she is still contemplating, she seems to have made up her mind that politicians – not doctors – should make decisions on women’s health-care needs, inequity of equal pay for women should be maintained, there should be no easing of the lines on Election Day enabling more women and the elderly to vote, and that there should be easy access to assault rifles that any soldier will tell you are weapons of war.

Let’s ask Sen. Vogel about these important issues affecting our lives that she chose not to mention. I am disappointed in what I heard, and didn’t hear. I will be paying closer attention to what she says and what she doesn’t say in the future – and I hope you will, too.

Anne Bacon is a physician residing in Winchester.