Tracy Thorne-Begland | AP Photo

The vote happened on vampire time, shortly after 1 a.m. Tuesday in Richmond. The question was whether to confirm Tracy Thorne-Begland, chief deputy prosecutor in the Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office, as a judge for General District Court, the lowest rung on Virginia’s bench.

Begland is a former U.S.Navy fighter pilot, honorably discharged from the military. He’s the father of two adopted children.

The local bar association recommended him. The General Assembly’s Richmond delegation supported him. The House of Delegates judicial appointments subcommittee unanimously deemed him qualified.

But Thorne-Begland is gay and he doesn’t hide it. That’s why the Virginia House of Delegates torpedoed his chance to be a judge.

Despite the late hour, the House did this quite nakedly, under the leadership of Del. Bob Marshall, R-Manassas, the most homophobic (and sex-obsessed) lawmaker in Virginia, if not the nation. Marshall waged a campaign against Thorne-Begland based on his sexual orientation.

It was perhaps the most ignoble roll call vote in the legislature’s last three decades.

Thorne-Begland needed 51 votes in the 100-member house for confirmation; the nomination mustered 33. The protocol in the legislature is that lawmakers who oppose a judge’s election simply don’t vote.

This time, 31 delegates emphatically voted “nay” on Thorne-Begland. Ten abstained for the record. And 26 did not vote. Some, but not all, of those had left the chamber by the time it came up.

Lawmakers from the Roanoke region were all over the map on the question.

Del. Joeseph Yost, R-Blacksburg, was the only one from this area to vote in Thorne-Begland’s favor.

Del. Ben Cline, R-Rockbridge, and Charles Poindexter, R-Franklin County, voted “nay” along with 29 other Republicans.

Dels. Anne Crockett-Stark, R-Wytheville, Lacey Putney, I-Bedford and Nick Rush, R-Christiansburg, abstained under House Rule 69. According to the rule, that signified they were present but declined to vote because they had a “specific, personal interest in the outcome.”

Dels. Chris Head, R-Roanoke, Greg Habeeb, R-Salem, and Onzlee Ware, D-Roanoke, did not vote.

(For a full listing of how all 100 delegates voted, click here).

Last week, I called all those lawmakers to find out why they voted they way they did, or why they had not voted. Four responded.

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How the heck have things gotten so out of whack?

The Radford Board of Visitors raised tuition prices last week by about 3.2 percent. Most of the other state universities have approved increases in that neighborhood. Virginia Tech has a tuition increase in the offing.

And this is billed almost as “good” news, in the wake of double-digit or nearly double-digit increases at state universities in recent years.

It’s going to cost a kid from Virginia $4,682 to attend college there in the fall semester. That’s just for tuition and mandatory fees. It doesn’t count room, board or other expenses. At Virginia Tech, tuition and fees are likely to be about $5,500 per semester.

Those prices are outrageously high. And you cannot blame most of the increase on inflation. Consider this illustration:

In 1978, when I entered the University of Maryland, in-state tuition and fees for one semester was $400. At the University of Virginia, the cost was $402 per semester.

Back then, the minimum wage was $2.65 per hour. In other words, at either institution, a kid could go to  school in exchange for the equivalent of roughly 151 hours of work.

Today, the minimum wage is $7.25. (If it had kept up with inflation since 1978, it would be $9.32).  That means one semester at Virginia Tech next fall is going cost about 758 hours of work. One semester at Radford cost 645 hours of work.

Even adjusting the minimum wage for inflation, the costs are almost four times what they were for in-state tuition and fees in the late 1970s.

The question is why?

“The major reason is Virginia, like every other state until very recently, has cut in half its state support — in inflation adusted terms — for in state’s students,” said Don Finley, president of the Virginia Business Higher Education Council. “It’s a very serious thing. That’s why these kids are so much in debt.

Finley was talking averages, since 2000, which is how far back the VBHEC has tracked the data. Larry Hincker, vice pressent —— at Virginia Tech, offered some specifics for just the past decade.

For the 2000-01 school year, the state support per in-state student at Virginia Tech totaled $9,501. Last year, that support dropped to $6,083, and if you adjust that inflation, it is actually $4,300 in terms of dollars in 2001.

In other words, state tuition support to Va Tech has dropped 55 percent in the past 10 years.

Because high education is a prime driver of economic growth, the commonwealth once had a share-costs-policy with a stated goal that Virginia taxpayers would cover 75 percent of an in-state student’s tuition costs, while he or she was responsible for 25 percent.

Because Virginia never came close to that, they moved those goal posts to 70 and 30 percent respectively. And then they moved them again to the current 67 and 33 percent.

And we still aren’t even close to that one. At Virginia Tech, state support covers about 41 percent of the cost of educating and in-state student. The other 59 percent comes from that student’s tuition, said Larry Hincker, —–.

Not beer. In 1978, you could get a six pack of Budweiser for one hour’s work at the minimum wage and still have some change left over. The cost in terms of the minimum wage is about the same today.

Compared to the minimum wage, in-state tuition is five times as expensive as it used to be.

Adjusted for inflation since 1978, the minimum wage would be $9.32.

Now, inflation has increased more than then minimum wage has since 1978. Adjust for inflation, it would be $9.32. Even at that wage,

In 1978, in-state tutition and fees for one semester at Maryland were just under $400. I still recall writing the check. At the University of Virginia, the cost was almost identical: $402.

That meant you could attend college full time for 151 hours of work, which was well within the ability of a middle-class student to afford.

Next year, in-state tuition and fees for one semester at Virginia Tech (a comparable school to Maryland in just about every way except football) will cost right around $5,500. That equals 760 hours of work at today’s minimum wage.

It’s true the minimum wage hasn’t kept pace with inflation. If it had, it would be around $8.75. But even at that rate, a semester’s tuition at Tech would equal 628 of work.

In other words, even adjusting for inflation, in-state tuition is four times as expensive now as it was then.

Why? There are a lot of reasons.

The people who have the most control over that cost are college administrator and state lawmakers.

T

Have you looked at in-state tuition at Virginia’s colleges and universities lately? It’s astoundingly expensive — not necessarily relative to other states, but to recent history. And that pretty much goes for everywhere. It’s not just Virginia.

Back in 1978, when was an instate- junior at the University of Maryland full-time tuition and fees were right around $800 per year. That number does not include room and board.

The minimum wage was $2.65 per hour then. Thus, a year’s tuition and fees cost 302 hours for anyone who worked at that rate.

The minimum wage is now $7.25. And do you have any idea how many hours a Virginia resident has to work at that rate to be a The number is right around 1,450.

Shot by Dan on Memorial Avenue

“In less enlightened times, the best way to impress women was to own a hot car. But women wised up and realized it was better to buy their own hot cars so they wouldn’t have to ride around with jerks.”
Scott Adams

Shot by Dan Thursday on Wasena Avenue

“For myself I hold no preferences among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous. Bricks to all greenhouses! Black thumb and cutworm to the potted plant!”
Edward Abbey

By Dan

Note from Dan: Lots of people are spending millions these days in an effort to elect good, old-fashioned conservative leadership in Washington. They want the nation to be more like Mississippi, the most conservative state in the union. The poster known as Hillary penned this  one about the Magnolia State.

Which of the 50 states has the most religious population?

More than 8 in 10 people in Mississippi (82%) say religion is very important in their lives, making the

Magnolia State the most religious according to Pew Research.

What is the most Republican and most conservative state in the nation? Mississippi

According to the 2011 data compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau:

☻Mississippi ranks 1st in the number of people living BELOW the poverty level.
☻Mississippi ranks 50th in median household income of $37,790 – the LOWEST in America – over $14,000 below the national figure.
☻Mississippi ranks 45th in school funding – this only made possible by a substantial amount of federal aid

Mississippi students have the LOWEST mean score on the ACT college admissions test.

Mississippi’s high school graduation rate: less than 60% of its children even graduate high school.

Mississippi led the Republican south — and the entire country – in providing dismal health care in 2009.

It is no coincidence that you get outcomes like Mississippi’s when you have super religious conservative Republicans governing.

These results: the worst incomes, educational performance, and health care – will be what Republicans will bring to the entire US if they can buy enough elections and representatives.

Finally we can all be Mississippians!

Shot by Dan in the West End neighborhood, a couple blocks from Wasena Bridge.

When the Earth is sick, the animals will begin to disappear, when that happens, The Warriors of the Rainbow will come to save them.
Chief Seattle

Rick Scott, Florida's 45th governor.

Gov. Rick Scott has been taking it on the chin a lot lately.

Remember the bill he supported to fine or yank the licenses of pediatricians who dared to ask patients’ parents whether they had a gun in their home? It died.

Remember Scott’s cockamamie scheme to drug-test ALL welfare recipients, even though studies show they use illegal drugs at far lower rates than the general population? (They’re poor; duh, they can’t afford dope). He wanted to test 80,000 state workers, too.

Remember how he had his staff ghost write letters to the editor of Florida newspapers, just in case his supporters were too dumb to write half-decent ones of their own?

Now (gasp!) it seems that most of Florida’s schoolchildren have suddenly grown a lot dumber since Scott became governor. All of a sudden, they’re miserably failing standardized reading and writing tests by alarming percentages (like 67 percent).

So what do they do in Florida when this happens? Easy peasy: They simply lower the minimum passing score.

From ClickOrlando.com:

The Board of Education decided in an emergency meeting Tuesday to lower the passing grade on the writing portion of Florida’s standardized test after preliminary results showed a drastic drop in student passing scores.

The results indicated only about a third of students would pass this year’s tougher Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test exam, compared with a passing rate of 80 percent or more last year.

Not that Scott is accepting any of the blame for this. From the same story:

“Our students must know how to read and write, and our education system must be able to measure and benchmark their progress so we can set clear education goals,” said Gov. Rick Scott in a statement Monday. “The significant contrast in this year’s writing scores is an obvious indication that the Department of Education needs to review the issue and recommend an action plan so that our schools, parents, teachers and students have a clear understanding of the results.”

Here is the clincher: Those test scores are used to grade schools, and to shut down the poorest-performing ones. This actually lowers the real estate values of homes in the areas with poor-performing schools. Some areas in Florida, which already has been killed by the popping of the real-estate bubble, may be seeing further home-value declines.

More from the same story:

“This incident again demonstrates that Florida school grades reflect profoundly political decisions, not objective measures of teaching and learning,” said [a] spokesman for FairTest: National Center for Fair & Open Testing in Jamaica Plain, Mass., Bob Schaeffer, in an email. “How can a measure which fluctuates from 81 percent to 27 percent ‘proficient’ in just one year even meet the laugh test?”

There’s the nut. How can it pass the “laugh test?” is a great question. It can’t.

To take just a bit off the sting off Scott, it should be noted that the minimum passing grades were raised significantly this year.But even when they drop them back to the old levels, by reducing the minimum, a startlingly greater number of kids are failing.

Nobody should be surprised by this, however. That’s because disgraced ex-CEO Scott has made it one of his aims as governor to thwart public education at every opportunity. There are myriad reasons for this.

One is, public school teachers are a conservative bugaboo. They organize (whether they’re in unions or not) and that makes them an evil demon in temples of the right wing.

Two, to borrow a page from Harry F. Byrd, the noted Virginia conservative: You don’t want to give kids too much schooling or they get uppity. Better off to keep to them stupid. That way, they’ll work for lower pay and they’ll shut up. Byrd actually believed that.

Three: Rick Scott has a grand master plan with regard to public schools. He wants to replace them, with privatized, at-home online education provided by companies that paid a lot in campaign donations to make sure he got elected governor.

And now that 67 percent of students in the state are failing standardized reading and writing exams, he might get his way.

A few of the members of Occupy Roanoke, at their regular perch in Elmwood Park, last month at their 6-month anniversary. | Shot by Dan

When I dropped by Occupy Roanoke’s daylight encampment in Elmwood Park on Saturday, the group was at a temporary impasse.

Its rules require the presence of at least 15 members for a vote on spending more than $50. There was a motion on the table to purchase an iPhone for communication purposes. But there weren’t 15 members around.

That’s unlikely to be an issue this weekend. Occupy Roanoke is hosting the very first Occupy Virginia “statewide general assembly” in Highland Park. Representatives of Occupy groups from Portsmouth, Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Staunton, Harrisonburg, Northern Virginia, Richmond and Radford are expected.

They’ll gather in the Alexander-Gish House, where they’ll focus on strengthening bonds as a statewide organization and coordinate future actions and events. Also joining them will be representatives from Roanoke Valley union locals, gay rights activists, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and a veterans group.

It won’t necessarily be a big rally. Bernard Alvarez, a spokesman for Occupy Roanoke, estimated a crowd of fewer than 100. That includes about 20 to 30 people from Occupy groups elsewhere in Virginia, he said.

Weather permitting, most of the visitors will be pitching tents at the Roanoke Mountain campground off the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The group chose Highland Park, rather than its traditional Elmwood Park headquarters, because it doesn’t want to get in the way of Local Colors, the annual diversity festival slated for Elmwood Park this weekend, Alvarez said. Gish House will provide cover for the meeting in case of rain.

Following the all-day meeting in the park, they plan to stage an off-the-cuff “march” through Roanoke on Saturday night, beginning at the Mayors Monument in Elmwood Park and proceeding down Jefferson Street, Campbell Avenue and Williamson Road.

They don’t have a parade permit, but “we’ve worked it out with the cops so that if we stagger groups of people, there won’t be a problem,” Alvarez said. The police “have been very generous with us, quite honestly.”

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