{"id":1871,"date":"2018-02-14T10:17:06","date_gmt":"2018-02-14T06:17:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=1871"},"modified":"2018-02-14T10:17:06","modified_gmt":"2018-02-14T06:17:06","slug":"different-state-same-you-know-what","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=1871","title":{"rendered":"Different state, same you-know-what"},"content":{"rendered":"

A page-one story in Sunday\u2019s edition of The Washington Post<\/em> describes the dealings of several new-ish members of Virginia\u2019s House of Delegates. (Trivia bonus: it’s the oldest continuous law-making body in the New World.) The piece highlights some of the assembly\u2019s young participants, though the issues they face are far from new. Unfortunately their so-called solutions suffer from the same problem.<\/p>\n

Delegate Will Morefield (\u201cR\u201d-Tazewell) and Delegate Lashrecse Aird (D-Petersburg) are millennial legislators \u201cdivided by party but united by need,\u201d as the Post<\/em> proclaims. United by something is the way I\u2019d describe it, by a phrase that might not be as nice. Morefield and Aird are both from disaffected areas of the state. They\u2019re poor and cut off from the gold mine where I live and everyone else is trying to move to. I used to live in a place like this too. It\u2019s called Binghamton, and for years I watched politicians of both parties try one \u201ceconomic development\u201d gimmick after another to attract business and investment. Actually, no, attracting business and investment needs no gimmick. It\u2019s a result more of stability than of gamesmanship. But nobody grandstands on stability.<\/p>\n

Enter Will Morefield, someone about whom I knew nothing before Sunday, but seems like both a sorry excuse for a Republican and a sorry excuse as a representative of my generation. His grand idea? Offer tax breaks to companies that locate in \u201cdisadvantaged places\u201d\u2014breaks that would exempt each employee from paying state income tax for 10 years.<\/p>\n

The thing about gimmicks is, they fail because they\u2019re gimmicks. This is neither new nor useful, and ignores laws of mathematics and economics.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe state\u2019s not losing any money,\u201d claims Morefield, who obviously majored in fuzzy math. (This is me reaching for my wallet.) \u201cThese companies aren\u2019t here anyway.\u201d (True, though what about companies who already are<\/em> here and have been paying taxes? If you owned a restaurant and then one opened across the street that didn\u2019t have to pay taxes, how\u2019dja feel about that?) \u201cWealthy areas roll out the red carpet all the time to lure Facebook data centers or pro sports stadiums. It\u2019s about time Tazewell County got some of that love.\u201d<\/p>\n

(My opponents are cheating by doing this unholy thing. I\u2019m going to start doing this unholy thing too. But it\u2019s cool. Don\u2019t worry.)<\/p>\n

Delegate Aird has gotten the Petersburg City Council to adopt a resolution endorsing the plan. She and Morefield, members of the \u201cmillennial caucus\u201d (let the record show I\u2019ve never liked people of my own generation), are now pushing the bill statewide.<\/p>\n

My diagnosis?<\/p>\n

Two wrongs don\u2019t make a right.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like the old members are pretty stuck in their ways,\u201d Aird said, as though age and seniority are somehow blocking this bold new idea. No, it\u2019s a bad idea, and hardly a new one. Taking one taxpayer\u2019s money and giving it to another is as old as government itself. That it now has hip sponsors or a trendy new oversight committee (the \u201cVirginia Economic Development Partnership\u201d\u2014cue wallet reach again) doesn\u2019t change a thing.<\/p>\n

Vanguard eye for the news.<\/p>\n

I still got it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A page-one story in Sunday\u2019s edition of The Washington Post describes the dealings of several new-ish members of Virginia\u2019s House of Delegates. (Trivia bonus: it’s the oldest continuous law-making body in the New World.) The piece highlights some of the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1871"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1872,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1871\/revisions\/1872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}