Daryl Mitchell | Wikimedia Commons

This afternoon Gov. Bob McDonnell unveiled an eye-opening plan he said would solve Virginia’s transportation funding woes once and for all: He wants to abolish the 17.5 cents-per-gallon gasoline tax and replace it by raising the general sales tax from 5 percent to 5.8 percent.

Because I may be doing a column about that proposal soon, I’m interested in your thoughts about it.

McDonnell says this will raise more than $500 million each year for transportation infrastructure projects in Virginia, which have been sorely hamstrung in recent years. Of course, that’s because the legislature irresponsibly  hasn’t raised the gas tax since 1987.

From the governor’s email:

“That’s right, no more gas tax at the pump. No sales tax at the pump either. When this plan passes the price of gas will go down, and Virginians will spend $3.5 billion LESS at the pump over the next five years.

“We then propose increasing the sales tax from 5% to 5.8%, still below every neighboring state and the District of Columbia, and putting that increase into transportation from here forward. The advantage of that change? We’re ensuring that transportation receives the new funding it needs in the years ahead by tying it to a mechanism that moves in tandem with economic activity and inflation. That is how every other tax works. That is what will make transportation funding sustainable again. Read more »

Bob McDonnell / AP

Note from Dan: This email came in last night from Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell. I reckon a guy can always be hopeful, eh?

Dear Friends,

As you know, this morning the Supreme Court of the United States voted to uphold President Obama’s healthcare plan. Ironically, the Court upheld the law based on it being a massive tax hike on Americans, which of course is the exact opposite of what the President argued when he pushed the plan through on a party-line vote in the Senate in 2009. Whatever the reasoning, our nation now stands on the verge of witnessing a bureaucratic takeover of our entire health care system.

Today’s Supreme Court decision to uphold President Obama’s disastrous healthcare law is detrimental to the Virginia economy, our nation’s prospects for economic recovery and the free-market system. And now, there is ONLY ONE WAY to fix what happened: Elect Mitt Romney the next President of the United States. Read more »

He says Gov. Bob McDonnell blew it by embroiling himself in the ultrasound/abortion controversy.

Yesterday I told you about a budget amendment from Gov. Bob McDonnell that would have left a majority of Virginia’s senior citizens service agencies (which provide programs such as Meals on Wheels) in a financially shaky straights.

Today, the governor withdrew his amendment. Advocates for seniors are overjoyed.

From McDonnell’s press office:

The governor’s decision to request that the amendment be withdrawn was made following input from a number of groups and care providers that a change to the existing formula to account for population shifts would have a disproportionate effect on the work done by Area Agencies in a number of Virginia communities. The governor believes these agencies do tremendous work and he supports their efforts. He is committed to ensuring they are well funded. He appreciates the information received over the past week and believes that it is in the best interest of Virginia’s seniors to keep the system in-place as it currently exists.

If the amendment had gone through, the LOA Area Office on Aging would have lost about $90,000 in funding for the coming budget year. With the amendment withdrawn, they stand to lost about $37,000 in funding compared to the current year.

But they’ve already made plans to cover that (hopefully) with a fundraiser called “Let’s Do Lunch,” that I’ll be telling you more about in June.

So stay tuned!

Dwight Burdette | Wikimedia Commons

Ron Adkins was on the phone Thursday and he was fit to be tied. He’s a former insurance broker, bail bondsman and bar owner from the Cave Spring area. He’s also a landlord and player in Roanoke County Republican politics.

He launched his spiel with “I’m no bleeding-heart liberal,” which is perhaps the understatement of the year. “I’m a Republican and I’m a conservative. But when it comes to people not eating, that’s where I draw the line.”

Adkins and many others around Virginia are incensed by one of 88 amendments that Gov. Bob McDonnell has proposed to the state budget. It would eliminate a $2.5 million appropriation the General Assembly included in the 2013-15 state budget for 15 of Virginia’s 25 regional offices on aging, which provide human services to the state’s homebound seniors.

Furious advocates for seniors have deluged state lawmakers’ offices with phone calls and email about this issue.

“This is by far the most feedback we’ve gotten on any amendment,” said Del. Greg Habeeb, R-Salem. Along with Del. Chris Head, R-Botetourt Co., he was one of the lawmakers who added the extra $2.5 million in senior-agency funding into the budget.

The legislature will vote Monday on that amendment and the others. And hanging in the balance is money for already cash-strapped service agencies.

The appropriation is necessary because of a new formula the Virginia Department for the Aging is using to allocate federal money for senior-service programs. That’s based on the U.S. census count of elderly, poor and minority residents in different parts of the state.

The fact is, the senior citizen population grew in all 25 of Virginia’s senior agency regions. But according the census, it grew more in Northern Virginia than it did elsewhere. So the flow of money has been redirected.

READ THE REST OF THIS COLUMN HERE.

Photo montage by Chris Overstreet

Night is falling on the household of Ken Cuccinelli. Let’s call it bedtime in Coochville, where there’s a bunch of young’uns.

As usual, the Virginia attorney general and his wife split up the chore of getting the kids settled into their slumbers. For

Ken, it’s story night for three pipsqueaks.

Let us imagine some of those scenes.

The attorney general enters his son’s room, and picks up a copy of Dr. Seuss’s “Horton Hatches The Egg.” He turns to the page he’d stopped reading from the night before.

“Very well,” said the elephant, “since you insist
You want a vacation.  Go fly off and take it.
I’ll sit on your egg and I’ll try not to break it.
I’ll stay and be faithful.  I mean what I say.”
“Toodle-oo!” sang out Mayzie and fluttered away.

There’s a pause, and the little boy says, “read the next page, Daddy.”

“Sure,” Ken says.

“It’s like taking the pill,” the free bird laughed out loud
“No egg will bind me in a nest stuck in branch!
“I’ll do what I want, I might buy a ranch.”
But that made God mad, so Mayzie flew at her peril,
And when she hit ground God made her quite sterile.

The little boy seems confused.

“Daddy,” he says, “why does mommy read it different?” Read more »

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Saturday, March 3. More information here.

UPDATE:

From the American Civil Liberties Union:

“We do not know yet if anyone’s free speech rights were violated,” said ACLU of Virginia Executive Director Kent Willis. “We do know, however, that from all appearances the police overreacted to a situation in which peaceful demonstrators gathered at a public place to exercise their First Amendment right to protest the government.”

“At the very least the spirit of the First Amendment took a blow on Saturday when the state used completely unnecessary military-style force to arrest peaceful protestors,” added Willis.

Anyone who witnessed the arrests or was arrested is encouraged to contact ACLU of Virginia Dunn Fellow Tom Fitzpatrick at 804-644-8080 or tfitzpatrick@acluva.org.

(h/t to Cold n P)

Gov. Bob McDonnell, Virginia’s “jobs governor.”

By Chris OBrion for The Roanoke Times

More from Richmond cartoonist Chris OBrion is here. For his main website, click here.

Grafic by Dan

Note from Dan: This succinct rant from Hillary really hits the nail on the head. Healthcare mandate = bad. Sonogram mandate for women seeking abortions = good. Optional HPV vaccination for girls = bad.

Question: Why don’t they mandate vaginal sonograms for women who want to KEEP their babies?

So the Republicans don’t want the government to force people to buy health insurance, but they don’t mind forcing women to have a vaginal probe inserted into their bodies?

Or that the GOP contends the state has no business urging young girls to be vaccinated against a virus that can later cause cervical cancer, but are willing to force women to undergo an invasive in-body medical test? There is something seriously demented about the Republican party’s values.

“The ultrasound legislation would constitute an unprecedented government mandate to insert vaginal ultrasonic probes into women as part of a state-ordered effort to dissuade them from terminating pregnancies, legislative opponents noted.

Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell, a socially conservative Roman Catholic, has said he will sign the ultrasound bill. “We’re talking about inside a woman’s body,” Del. Charnielle Herring, a Democrat, said in an emotional floor speech. ‘This is the first time, if we pass this bill, that we will be dictating a medical procedure to a physician.’ “

Gov. Bob McDonnell

This morning on CNN, Gov. Bob McDonnell took what has got to be regarded as a brave, reality-based step for any Republican politician: He actually conceded that an economic recovery is underway.

This amounts to near heresy in the lala land of conservative, trash-President Barack Obama-at-all-costs thought. It’s very dangerous ground politically.

But don’t you worry, RWers. McDonnell made an amazing recovery with a quick-on-his-feet qualification giving all the credit for that to Republican governors like himself. Who else?

Here’s the statement, from Talking Points Memo:

“Look, I’m glad the economy is starting to recover but I think it’s because of what Republican governors are doing in their states. Not because of the president,” McDonnell said on CNN’s State of the Union.

“It’s been a complete failure of leadership,” he said of Obama.