OPINION:
The crew over at the U.S. Census Bureau released its latest batch of state population data last month. There were no surprises. States whose governments emphasized minimal government and low taxes continued to be the winners for net domestic migration, while states with high taxes and maximal government continue to be the losers.
More specifically, in the past five years, Florida (plus 890,348 new residents from domestic migration) and Texas (plus 812,735) have been the destinations of choice of those moving from other states. California (net loss of 1.69 million residents, who moved elsewhere) and New York (net loss of 1.1 million) have been the biggest victims of domestic migration.
I mention this because the voters of the commonwealth of Virginia recently hired a new governor, Abigail Spanberger, and gave the Democrats control of the oldest legislative body in North America (the Virginia House of Delegates) and the Virginia Senate. So far, despite protestations from Her Excellency that she is moderate, things do not look promising.
Most disturbingly, one of the initial appointments of the new, “moderate” governor was Stanley Meador as secretary of public safety. Mr. Meador was one of the crew at the FBI who wanted to put agents in Catholic churches to ferret out all those crazy radicals who huddle around coffee and doughnuts after Mass every Sunday.
If Mr. Meador is the new face of public safety in the commonwealth, then we might want to start rooting for the criminals.
Speaking of rooting for criminals, Democrats in the legislature have introduced bills to eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for violent crimes, including rape and manslaughter, and to reduce penalties for robbery. That does not seem directionally correct.
It gets worse. In their first week back in session, Democrats introduced legislation to impose a new sales tax on retail deliveries in Northern Virginia, raise local sales taxes statewide and levy a new net investment tax on individuals, trusts and estates, increase the hotel tax in Arlington, create a new personal property tax on electric landscaping equipment (someone must have a neighbor with a leaf blower), impose a new tax on the sales of guns and ammunition and, most ominously, create two new tax brackets to increase taxes on the “rich.”
There are proposals to impose a delivery tax, an event tax, a storage facility tax, a gym membership tax, a counseling tax, a dog grooming tax, a new car tax, a car repair tax and on and on. To toss a little salt into the wound, Her Excellency also told the General Assembly that Virginia would be rejoining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which is specifically designed to increase energy prices — and which studies have shown does just that.
So much for affordability.
There’s more. Legislation has been introduced to ban gas-powered leaf blowers (what is it with these people?), to prohibit White men from competing for government contracts under $100,000, to ban the commonwealth from requiring nonprofits to verify that the recipients of taxpayer funds are eligible (essentially inviting Minneapolis-scale fraud), to prohibit the hand-counting of election ballots, and to expand the Democrats’ favorite anti-democratic process, ranked choice voting.
My hope, and the hope of most Virginians, is that Her Excellency really is a moderate. The reality is, of course, that she is a very competent Democratic operative who will almost certainly toe the party line as she heads toward an eventual run for president.
In Congress, she voted with her fellow Democrats about 90% of the time. She has a lifetime conservative rating of about 9. That does not suggest an independent frame of mind.
Failure of a political jurisdiction, whether a town, city, state or nation, is a choice. It is a choice made by the citizens and enacted and executed by their representatives. When I was born in New York City, the state of New York was the most populous state in the union. By the time I die, it may not be one of the five largest states in the union.
Voting with one’s feet — leaving home because of greener pastures elsewhere — is the most definitive judgment a person can render on a political jurisdiction. It is the best, most complete and most honest assessment of the competence and promise of a political jurisdiction. It is not an accident that millions of residents are fleeing sclerotic places such as California, New York and Illinois.
It would be a shame if Virginia — cradle of presidents, mother of the nation, the Old Dominion — were to head down this same sad, dead end these states are traveling. The only people who can prevent that, however, are the voters of Virginia. In this instance, failure is definitely an option.
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times.
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