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In
the debut week of Bacon's Rebellion-The Blog,
Bacon’s Rebellion wonks took to blogging like
government takes to spending.
The car tax took top honors for most impassioned
debate, but of course the wonks took it new levels,
linking it to transportation policy and sprawl.
Readers began entering the fray, with Chris
Brancato confessing to addiction after only two
comments. Let’s
roll the highlight reel:
Jim
Bacon
The
people we should worry about aren't adolescent
cadets with a lousy sense of humor. It's the scolds--the
true heirs of the totalitarian Nazis--who would convert
expressions of undesirable thought into punishable
offenses.
MIT
and Stanford didn't become R&D powerhouses through
state support--they built partnerships with local
industry. Northern Virginia
is
one of the wealthiest regions in the country. It's time
for NoVa's business leadership to stop
bellyaching--and to belly up to the bar!
Abandoning
all philosophical principle, it appears,
Virginia's
Republican Party has simply embraced the
agenda of auto-dependent exurbanites.
Barnie
Day
In
Virginia, if
the top of the ticket is strong enough, a turnip
can get elected down-ticket.
This
proposal is so lame,
I'm surprised Howell, Callahan, and company all didn't
show up on crutches.
Guns in day care centers! What's next? Nursing homes?
Every day Virginia
Republicans remind us why it took them 130 years to
win a majority.
We
will NEVER maintain and continuously upgrade a system of
this scope with found waste, blue ribbon studies, or new
patterns of human settlement! It takes MONEY!
Lots and lots of MONEY! Continuous, never ending MONEY!
I'm
talking about the hard,
glassy-eyed right. They passed 'conservative' a
hundred miles back, ran out gas fifty miles back,
abandoned the car, kept going when the road ended, and
are now walking, transfixed, in a straight line, to a
distant mountain top, where the spaceship will pick them
up.
Ed Risse
Vivian
[
Watts
] is
a long-time friend. She is smart … She has been a …
member of the General Assembly, Secretary of
Transportation and now is again in the General Assembly
… she does
not have a clue.
Stop
talking "politics" and discuss the merits and
the long-term impact of taxes on citizens, the economy
and the environment, not on those obsessed with
maintaining the Two
Party Dictatorship.
Phil
Rodokanakis
I’m
given to understand that George Fitch plans to kick off
his campaign [for Governor] on February 8, 2004. Given his economic track record on cutting
spending—and taxes—in Warrenton, his candidacy
should rejuvenate
the dialog as to the direction our Government has
taken given the recent double-digit spending increases
in the State budget.
Don’t
get me wrong. I don’t smoke, so banning all smoking
from public places is OK in my book. But the
libertarian side in me says that government has no
place dictating to private businesses how they should
run their enterprises. Restaurateurs should be allowed
to make a decision on banning smoking solely on economic
and market-based factors.
Steven
Sisson
If
not bordering on the political
ridorkulous (ridiculously dorky), it's just plain
ludicrous to believe business owners would agree to a
capital investment with strings attached to the
businesses’ health and longevity.
Will
Vehrs
The
combination of car tax, revenue surplus, and massive
increase in local property assessments in
Fairfax
County
could be used by skillful
political operatives as a powerful issue.
Despite
all our wishes to the contrary, it'll be a long time
before a car is not a necessity to earn a living in Virginia. I
always thought "No Car Tax" was a populist
measure, but it has lost its populism.
--January
31, 2005
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