November/December 2007

Upfront - A Modest Proposal

Instead o eating our state representatives, let's just fire them all

By Michael Jon Khandelwal

The political winds are beginning to blow. I see the windmills turn every time I hear an incumbent or challenger begin to tell me why I should give them my vote. The warm air I feel seems to emanate from their mouths, although it often smells like it came from somewhere else.

In early November, we go to the polls to elect a slate of delegates and senators who will represent us in the next year's General Assembly, and a lot of money is being spent to get our votes. In the campaign for the sixth Senate seat here in Hampton Roads, incumbent Sen. Nick Rerras and challenger Ralph Northam have gone through more than one million dollars to convince us why we should give them a part-time job that pays less than $18,000 a year—a position that's job description, lately, has been to actively accomplish nothing.

Mixing money and politics has always made me feel uneasy. Thank goodness this is the first time it's ever happened. You can only imagine what would occur if they regularly mixed: Richmond's streets would be paved with gold and surrounded by Truffula trees; voters would receive free steak dinners just for going to the polls (vegetarians would receive eggplant parmesan); and Election Day would be a state holiday.

Of course, the roads in Hampton Roads would still be paved with potholes.

In 1729, Jonathan Swift wrote his famous and scathing satire, "A Modest Proposal," where he suggested that the Irish might solve their economic woes by selling poor children to rich Englishmen as food. His pamphlet was in response to the indifference of the land owners towards their poor tenants. Although I'd like to aspire to Swift's use of language, I cannot, in good conscience, call for the eating of our elected officials. It's most likely illegal, but more than that, in this day of nationwide health concerns, I cannot condone the eating of such fatty food.

I saw we just fire them all and let some new folks try their hand at making the same mistakes.

But, while most of us feel like the state house as a whole is broken, we all seem to be enamored with our own representatives to that body. This creates a big problem, because each delegate and senator is someone's beloved local politician.

Many are upset about various issues within our commonwealth, most notably the "bad driver" fees now imposed to help raise money for road construction. Even if your representative votes exactly the ways you want on a particular measure, if the efforts still fail, perhaps he or she didn't try hard enough. Why might they not try hard? Because they're all beholden to each other and to a truckload of special interests. If Del. Jim "Jimmy" Jones is a puppet of the duck food industry, he may temper is support of a bill to build an exit ramp just to get Del. Ray "Ray" Rayburn to help him get some pond construction subsidies later on.

Let's not take a chance. Let's get rid of them all. If the entire state turns over, we won't have to worry about Hampton Roads losing seniority in committees. Our seniority is over-rated anyway. Having senior members of the assembly didn't do us any good when it came to transportation funding. The state owes Hampton Roads hundreds of millions for road construction, and we're still not getting our fair share.

We're all guilty. We're the ones continually electing ineffective politicians who are putting their desire to be liked by their friends in Richmond ahead of the future of Hampton Roads. The same thing happened to me in junior high when some of my friends thought the eighth-graders were cooler and stopped hanging out with the rest of us at the lunch table.

If we use transportation as an example, we could imagine an easy solution. One: make the legislature give Hampton Roads residents what we're due. This is currently much more than $500 million (just based on the money we pay and the money we receive versus the rest of the state—see previous Upfront columns for exact figures). If they don't we could succeed from the rest of Virginia and see how long the whiners in parts west survive without our economic engine. The, our streets could be paved in gold!

Of course, we could just raise the gas tax state-wide, but that would require a controversial decision by state legislators, and everyone knows incumbents don't make controversial decisions, even if they create jobs and wealth for a region.

Perhaps the best way to easily raise money for Hampton Roads would be to go ahead with some of the proposed windmill farms. Only, let's put the biggest windmill farm inside the chambers of the state capitol. All that wind power is sure to ease our reliance o oil and help stave off global warming while lowering our winter heating bills. best of all, though, at least we'll get something positive from all the gassy politicians as they continue their efforts to take our money and build roads in Richmond that no one uses.