Urban Politics

WHITHER GOES VIRGINIA?

Northern Virginia (where I live) is a fast-growing megalopolis. We have ever-increasing taxes and County budgets in the Billions. We have lots of illegal aliens and “Sanctuary” cities and Counties. We believe that the rest of the state “takes more from us than we get back”. We oppose gun possession and ownership. We always have annual budget “deficits” despite ever-increasing taxes. What funding we get for the “roads” we always complain about, we blithely spend on pedestrian walkways and bike paths and traffic lights for illegal aliens that frequently walk and ride bikes, and for things like road landscaping and bike paths for young commuters but mostly we spend it quickly on expensive public transportation systems that (like our teachers and police and County employees) are always in need of “more”. Then we complain that our traffic is “grid locked” and our roads and bridges are falling behind in maintenance “because” the state is somehow hostile to us and won’t give us “enough” or “our fair share”. We always have Bond Issues on our ballots that we are told “must be passed” or schools or roads will be closed. All of this, we believe is the result of “mistreatment” and “animosity” by state politicians and rural bumpkins that are “bilking” us and thereby making our lives less than ideal as they spend “our” money on “their” roads and schools.

So we are “taking control” of the State of Virginia as our population gives us a growing majority representation in state government. We grow angry with politicians who want to control state spending. We welcome the “help” of national animal rights organizations and environmental organizations to defeat politicians that are hostile to things like closing roads in National Parks, or allowing Federal land control and zoning of rural private property in Federally declared “Heritage Areas” or “Wilderness”. Lurid accusations against politicians that refuse to make penalties for cock fighting greater than those for having sex with a minor or failing to report an abortion for a child under the age of consent are last-minute grist for newspaper ads intended to defeat politicians that protect gun rights and try to control government spending and bureaucratic growth.

In one form or another this scenario has occurred or is occurring in other urban areas from Boston and Philadelphia to Chicago and Minneapolis to Seattle and Los Angeles. Urban residents, whether called Democrats o r Republicans or liberals or “moderates” or “Republicans-in-name-only” or activists, they are increasingly “taking over” state governments and making them “serve” the urban agenda. Ironically, as states like New Jersey or California are “harnessed” by urban political agendas, the higher taxes and resentment against increasing government powers that eventually impact on almost all state residents cause residents to relocate to other (“lower tax”, “fewer laws”, “animal owner” or “private property” friendly, etc.) states. I say “ironically” because in so many instances those Californians fleeing to western intermountain states or those New Yorkers fleeing to Florida or South Carolina try to replicate the government and regulations from which they fled. Complaints about gun ownership or hunting or trapping or smells from livestock or noise or garbage pickups or low-keyed law enforcement lead to calls for restrictions on guns or hunting or pet ownership or dog breeding or animal slaughter or school discipline and more often than not, the urban veterans are experienced with lobbying and influencing government so change and friction and all the things they fled from taxes to busybody government follow them and then grow where they settle.

On the East Coast this urban influence is spreading south and north from the Washington/Boston corridor. What was emerging 100 years ago in New York City is now common in CT, RI, MA, and NJ: urban control of state government, ever-higher taxes with constant deficits, hostility to gun ownership, environmental and animal “rights” extremism, and less respect for human life and social institutions like marriage and parental authority. We see this moving north in New England and now south into Virginia.

On the West Coast similar urban political agendas are spreading from California and Oregon and Washington state to cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas and Salt Lake City and Denver and Albuquerque. Just as the ex-Mayor of Philadelphia is now harnessing the state of Pennsylvania government to the urban agenda in the East, so too are the western cities and megalopolises harnessing state governments for these urban agendas as we see emerging in Virginia.

In so many cases, these urban agendas coincide neatly with Federal agendas and the national and international lobby groups that influence Federal politicians and bureaucrats so profoundly. Think about more “government” control of guns, wild animals, domestic animals, hunting, logging, trapping, fishing, rodeos, pets, private property, public property (access, closures, uses, etc.), ranching, food, homes, transportation, education, etc. and then consider the special interest groups from the Sierra Club and Humane Society of the United States to the anti-growth and population control groups. Consider also the political rewards for Federal politicians that enable these urban agendas with government funds and new laws. Consider all the bureaucracies it grows and births as one agenda item after another is begun and/or increased. Do not fail to consider the United Nations agendas from gun control and land designations under UN auspices to population control, world courts, and authority over plants and animals and their use. Consider also the ancillary financial beneficiaries from the special interest organizations and contractors to the University professors and media outlets that generate favorable justifications while ignoring the growing corrosion to society.

Some examples of such corrosion of society are the loss of freedoms, liberties, and traditions inherent in American history until recent times. Local communities like local government are increasingly powerless to establish and protect community values, be they as forthright as regulating cockfighting or the slaughter of horses or the regulation of the plants and animals (wild and domestic) that occur in their communities. Renewable natural resources like trees, grazing fodder, wild animals, and water are increasingly controlled (meaning increasingly unmanaged, unused, wasted, and turned into things like catastrophic fire fuel) by State and National laws and bureaucracies with increased power at the expense of private property owners and local community governments. The resulting losses to rural economies both weakens rural families and livelihoods while simultaneously playing into the urban control agendas so evident in state capitols like Springfield Illinois and Annapolis, Maryland.

The Maryland model is relevant to the notion that Virginia’s political evolution is important. Maryland is next-door to Virginia and closer politically (until recently) to its neighbors to the north like New Jersey and Massachusetts. Their large urban (Baltimore and the DC suburbs) enclaves overshadow the voting power of rural residents of the mountains to the west and the farms and waters to the east. They, like New Jersey, are hostile to managing the black bears that are overabundant or controlling the coyotes and deer and other wildlife that threaten public health and safety. They, like New York City and Philadelphia, are always raising taxes and always calling special sessions to force through tax increases. They, now like Virginia, have just passed “the biggest tax increase ever” and they are still in need of slot machine authority to generate “more” “to cover the deficit” that goes into “the billions”.

Urban state politicians in states like Maryland and Oregon consistently strip rural communities of necessary rural living tools. Guns for protection from wild animals and for personal safety, animal control methods like the use of dogs or traps for predators or management programs that minimize or eliminate animals that are dangerous or harmful, plant thinning programs to minimize fires, and fishing and camping recreation reductions on public lands are examples of such rural living tools of no interest to urban residents other than to question why they should “be allowed”? This phenomenon fits hand-in-glove with the recent tolerance for Federal “taking” of private property without compensation and the introduction and protection of deadly and harmful predators under the Endangered Species Act; as well as the explosion of Federally subsidized conservation easements that are diminishing the ability of rural America to be anything other than a deserted wasteland peopled only by the rich. Anyone reading the news knows that Federal politicians representing these urban-oriented states are nearly all supporters of “more” Wilderness and “more” government land ownership and closure legislation. They are the ones supporting wolves and grizzly bears that they see as only being “out there” (meaning “somewhere else”).

Internationally, the same situation exists. Two days ago an article about the future of Colombia painted a swing toward radical socialism and alliance with Venezuela based on the growing socialist urban power of Bogota. Similarly in Europe as the power of urban Britain grows, rural Britain sees the same changes seen in America. The same is seen in Germany and Spain. As the urban constituencies’ power grows in Europe, so too (like in the US) European Community government in Brussels’ power grows in scope and boldness. Whether it is bullfighting in Spain or hunting in Britain or fishing in Germany or wolves in Finland , the story is the same: urban “values” imposed by ever-bigger and centralizing governments, and less freedom.

It is only a matter of time before Virginia becomes like Maryland becomes like New Jersey. In all seriousness, Virginians will soon find this state government enacting New Jersey-like gun laws and then as crime increases and more horrific crimes occur, we Virginians will, like the Mayor of New York City, blame North Carolina and West Virginia for “supplying guns” to otherwise peaceful Virginians. We will, like Massachusetts, restrict trapping and not allow hunting of harmful animals while vilifying hunters and trappers as violent drunkards. We will increase the Hunter Education “requirements” to make it all but impossible for anyone to willingly endure and then point to the decrease in hunters as “inevitable” and “natural”. We will laud the closure of state and County roads through National Parks and then complain about “gridlock” and the “need for more transportation funding”. We will clamor for Federal “Heritage Areas” throughout the state and then holler when a power plant or refinery or park or path is proposed near or on “our” property.

If you think this is a political hack piece, you are mistaken. The two front-runners for President are a New York US Senator and an ex-New York City Mayor. The Democrat Party is very closely allied with the special interest groups representing urban agendas. The Republican Party makes no bones about “needing” urban voters and in spite of being opposed strongly by urban interest groups, “reaches out to them” for fear of being labeled “extreme”. They have consistently been “urban agenda-lite” in recent years. Both Parties use the “feel-good” nature of rural bashing (for instance as seen in environmental and animal legislation enacted as Nixon and the Congress abandoned South Vietnam, and in the plethora of “Wilderness” and other government land and animal control legislation currently parked in Congressional Committees in anticipation of the upcoming Presidential and Congressional elections) to enthuse urban voters at the expense of limited rural groups like campers and ranchers and hunters incrementally. As I look at the Party platforms, the news analyses, the candidates, the Congressional language, and the public concern I am unable to discern any awareness of, let alone commitment to address, this growing phenomenon that has wide-ranging consequences.

Urban governance is certainly different in many ways. Crowding, crime, and actually an amalgam of many smaller communities makes for a starkly different problem than does small, isolated rural communities and homes in the midst of farms or forests. Private property ownership is viewed very differently by renters and welfare recipients than it is by landowners and homeowners. Public land access and management is a very different matter to those living nearby than by those living far away. Government services and public expectations are very different in Webster, North Dakota than in Newark, New Jersey. One is forced to ask if the current political divisions can long endure with growing tension between a growing urban populace and a dwindling rural countryside. Do we understand what is happening here? Do we support it? Is it in our best interest nationally? How relevant is a US Constitution that attempts to “guarantee” certain rights and specifically limit and protect the roles and power of government when we increasingly move toward the democracy so feared by the Founding Fathers wherein we can simply vote or pass laws to take what we want or to force others to live as we think they should instead of as they wish to live? Is there an answer? Can we return to letting others live as they would and to paying for what we demand without taking from others?

“Getting along” isn’t the answer. Russia and China and Zimbabwe are examples of political “getting along” meaning no discussion and no way except what government thinks is best for itself. “Bitter confrontation” as we see today is also not the answer. The “gotcha” politics of today is clearly self-destructive. One or both of the political Parties will have to reconfigure into a new paradigm that incorporates addressing urban concerns and protecting rural values in a more considered way. I say this not to “preserve” the rural values but to emphasize their importance to the economic health and fortitude of the nation. Preserving freedoms, traditions, and the Constitution as we address urban issues is the challenge. If we fail, our future can be seen on the nightly newscasts from Caracas or Havana or Islamabad.

Like I say, we should all be concerned about Virginia because it tells us much about the moment and much about the importance of the task before us.

Jim Beers
15 November 2007

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- Jim Beers is available for consulting or to speak. Contact: jimbeers7@verizon.net

- Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist, Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow. He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and Washington DC. He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands. He has worked for the Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security Supervisor in Washington, DC. He testified three times before Congress; twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60 Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to expanding Federal Invasive Species authority. He resides in Centreville, Virginia with his wife of many decades.

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