Bob McDonnell for his part, has won the endorsement of the Richmond Times Dispatch, but it’s widely known that all Media General newspapers are expected to endorse GOP candidates for statewide office. In their McDonnell endorsement, they glossed over McDonnell’s extreme right-wing social views and praised the McDonnell transportation plan which was called “dishonest” by The Post and a “farce” by The Roanoke Times.  The Virginian-Pilot said that, “Bob McDonnell’s plan is a chain-link fence of stall tactics designed to distract voters into believing that progress is being made while not providing the money to actually make it.”

As for me, I just call McDonnell’s plan gimmickry which is irresponsible and fails to address the reality in which we live: we must spend money to fix this problem and spending money means raising taxes. If we fail to do this, we risk wrecking the economies of Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads which generate the revenue which pays for the public school systems across the state. If we don’t fix this transportation mess, we’ll hurt our public schools and drive every community’s economy into the ditch.

When it comes to public schools, I’ve long believed that a strong public school system is the best economic development tool government can provide. Employers will locate in communities which value public schools. By valuing public education, I mean raising teacher pay and teacher standards. I also mean increasing funding for public schools.

These anti-tax ideologues like Bob McDonnell who dominate the GOP want the best of everything but they don’t want to pay for it. They always seem to believe that if we just cut back “waste, fraud and abuse” in government, we won’t have to raise taxes for anything. The reality is, we DO need to raise taxes to raise the revenue needed to fix these problems. And like that house with the leaky roof, you have to fork over the cash for the new roof eventually. If you wait too long, you can end up making a bad problem worse.

That’s what we face in Virginia. It’s time for a governor who will address the transportation problem with realistic solutions with bi-partisan support. Creigh Deeds is the best choice to lead us to a solution which will engender the most support in the legislature.

Creigh's for me!

The Washington Post has endorsed Democratic State Sen. Creigh Deeds as its choice for Governor of Virginia. The Post’s editorial highlights Sen. Deeds’s biggest strength in his campaign against right wing Republican Bob McDonnell: only Deeds has a workable plan to fix Virginia’s transportation problem.

The Post writes that Deeds, “has the good sense and political courage to maintain the forward-looking policies of the past while addressing the looming challenge of fixing the state’s dangerously inadequate roads,” while McDonnell, ”offers something different: a blizzard of bogus, unworkable, chimerical proposals, repackaged as new ideas, that crumble on contact with reality. They would do little if anything to build a better transportation system.”

I couldn’t agree more.

As a Northern Virginian, every election I see candidates claim they will do something to fix our clogged roads, yet once they get elected, whether they are Republican or Democrat, they generally do nothing as our traffic gets worse. Creigh Deeds understands that Northern Virginia’s traffic problem isn’t Northern Virginia’s problem alone — it’s Virginia’s problem. As The Post noted in its endorsement of Deeds’s candidacy during the Democratic primary, Deeds once heard a constituent from rural Lunenberg County complain to him about spending tax money in Northern Virginia for roads. Deeds quickly responded, “Who do you think is paying for your schools?” The Post went on to quote Deeds as saying, “Right now, the economic engine that has been driving Virginia has serious transportation woes. It’s in the interest of every single Virginian, no matter where he or she lives, to fix that problem.”

Deeds is right of course. Currently, Fairfax County, where I live and work, keeps 20 cents of every dollar in tax receipts it sends to Richmond. If we don’t fix the traffic problem in Fairfax and the rest of Northern Virginia, the public schools in the rest of Virginia will suffer. Transportation problems aren’t limited to Northern Virginia however. Hampton Roads, Richmond and rural areas of the Shenandoah Valley face transportation woes, too. Some estimate that Virginia faces over $100 billions in unfunded, but needed transportation projects. Others report that if new funding isn’t found, the state’s transportation budget will have to be cut by $2.6 billion over the next six years.

McDonnell, for his part, has run a campaign critical of Deeds for entertaining the idea of new taxes to fix the problem. Yet look at McDonnell’s solution: environmentally risky off shore drilling which won’t produce any revenue during the term of the next governor, or perhaps never; toll roads on I-95 which may never gain Federal approval; the privatization of state liquor stores which may not earn the revenue projected and would definitely cut $103 million out of the state’s human services budget; and worst of all $5.4 billion in cuts to the public schools, health care and public safety budgets in Virginia.

We can’t afford that risky, dishonest Gilmore-esque choice.

I will note that The Post endorsement comes on the first anniversary of what I call, “Fake Virginia Day“, the day last year when McCain-Palin campaign spokeswoman Nancy Pfotenhauer tried to cynically divide Virginia into two parts — “real Virginia”, which supported her candidate, Sen. John McCain, and everybody else, who apparently weren’t real and weren’t “Southern” enough.

To me, Bob McDonnell is just as cynical as Nancy Pfotenhauer, but he’s been more adept at getting Virginians to buy into his gimmicks and ignoring his 18 year record in the legislature. He’s also run a campaign in keeping with the political strategy he advised in his much criticized graduate school thesis he wrote for Rev. Pat Robertson’s law school. In it, he wrote, “Republicans must produce creative marketing to reach the average citizen…” (p. 67).

I will give McDonnell that — his campaign has been filled with “creative marketing.” The problem is that’s all he offers. Almost everything he says isn’t politically feasible, practical or intellectually honest. As The Post writes in Sunday’s editorial, McDonnell offers a, “prescription for yesterday’s Virginia, not tomorrow’s.” The Post goes on to say that, “Virginians should not confuse Mr. McDonnell’s adept oratory for wisdom, nor Mr. Deeds’s plain speech for indirection. In fact, it is Mr. Deeds whose ideas hold the promise of a prosperous future.”

What I want to know is, will Virginians heed the advice offered by the paper with offices across the Potomac River from where I live? They did in the Democratic Primary and some say the paper’s endorsement gave Sen. Deeds the push he needed for his come from behind primary victory. Will it have the same effect a second time?

But I do think it’s worth noting that many of the President’s supporters, indeed the President himself, joined Obama’s critics in saying that the honor was not deserved. In my view, they are all missing the point. What the Nobel committee’s decision recognizes is that the world changed on November 4, 2008. The rest of the world never thought we would elect a one term black Senator in his 40s. Given our history of racial and ethnic discrimination, they didn’t believe we had it in us.

Most Americans still don’t fully understand the level of disregard and disgust that the rest of the world viewed America prior to President Obama’s election. Almost overnight, in one November day, that hatred dissipated. In its place, the world began to take a second look at the U.S. and Americans.

In my view, when we  elected President Obama we sent the signal to the rest of the world that America was pressing the pause button on the trajectory that President Bush had our country on. We said to the world we want a new direction. And most importantly, we confounded those who hate our country, who never thought we would elect the candidate who called for an end to the war in Iraq and an end to the prison in Guantanamo.

But now, with this Nobel prize, the awards committee is laying down a challenge to the President and to our country. Make good on your promises. Use your potential. Do the good things you have in you.

Some say this decision to give the President the Nobel Peace Prize was a mistake. Perhaps. But not if it spurs the President to use his extraordinary leadership and communications skills to lead the U.S. and the world to a more peaceful coexistence.

Rev. Dobson warns that only a resurgence of Republican power can “save America from national disaster.” Watch. If this doesn’t scare you, you’re not paying attention.