Trani Gets Some Payback

A word to the Wise: be wary when you mess with a street-wise Italian guy from Philly.

That's Eugene P. Trani, the outgoing president of Virginia Commonwealth University, to be precise.

Trani's 19-year tenure at VCU has been marked by huge successes and some serious questions about abusing his power. On the plus side, Trani has taken VCU, basically a third tier commuter school, and taken it clearly into second-tier status. He's raised the level of student and expanded the programs the school offers, including a number of overseas outlets such as one in Qatar.

Richmond's renaissance around Monroe Park and Broad Street is also an achievement that only a very rare man or woman can claim credit for.

On the negative side, Trani has been criticized for big-footing neighborhoods such as Oregon Hill as he's rebuilt and expanded. He is a bit of a megalomaniac, renaming the venerable Medical College of Virginia as VCU med school, to the chagrin of legions of MCV grads. Trani did so because a USA Today reporter got MCV mixed up with UVA -- not exactly a serious reason. Trani was also under heavy criticism for the scandal in which Richmond's former police chief won a bachelor's degree without meeting requirements.

My issue with Trani was that he got so involved with the Richmond power structure that he threw his weight around with no checks or balances. He has been criticized for spending so much time on bricks and mortar projects that he squandered opportunities to enhance VCU's rep as a research center.

It badly needed it since on Trani's watch, in 1999, the National Institutes of Health banned VCU (and MCV) from doing any research work on human bodies after failing to keep federal privacy rules in line. In recovery, Trani hired a well-regarded scientists to do a makeover of VCU research. The woman, a South African by background, did just that, but later quit in a controversy involving Trani's backing of highly questionable, strictly confidential research contracts with Philip Moris USA.

Many first rate schools decline to take tobacco money. Others that do, such as the University of Virginia and Duke, accept money only if they control the research. In VCU's case, Trani gladly took the money and called the contracts "research service agreements" which supposedly meant they weren't really research. In the original deal, anyone who questioned the contracts was to be immediately reported to Philip Morris. Groups such as the Association of American University Professors said that Trani's view that the contracts were not research was nonsense.

Trani wanted to protect Philip Morris because the tobacco giant bailed out his faltering Virginia Biotechnology Research park. So when the New York Times called a year or so ago when it was breaking the story about the secretive research pacts, Trani wouldn't talk to them.

I smelled something funny, especially since the local newspaper, which pushes Trani and VCU hard, had its "investigative" reporter take a look. He concluded that nothing was amiss because the University of Louisville, another low-ranked school in another tobacco town, had similar pacts.

So, I did some of my own investigating which was published a year ago on richmond.com. My story, which somehow is no longer available on Richmond.com's server after Media General bought the Website, outlined the research issues and noted that some faculty and administrators were fearful of Trani's reaction if they questioned thet tobacco research. Later, as national attention stirred, a faculty panel put in place by Trani recommended against such future pacts. I also blogged on this site about the controversy.

Well, this month, Richmond magazine has a cover on Trani. To wit:

"On hearing the comments of a local blogger, describing his administrative atmosphere as "Neo-Stalinist," Trani tilts his head as if playing Name That Tune and names the writer instead. "Is that Galuszka," he guesses correctly, naming a contributor to the Bacon's Rebellion blog, Peter Galuszka.

"He doesn't even now what neo-Stanlinist is!" Trani replies with a touch of amusement "I do! That's my field!" (He is, in fact, an expert in Russian history).

My, but Trani does have a long memory. He's wrong, however, about me not knowing what neo-Stalinist is. I first visited the Soviet Union as a college student in 1971 and spent years studying the language. I later spent a total of six years in the 1980s and 1990s there as an American news correspondent, some of which involved me being followed around or phone tapped by KGB officials. I probably have more time on the ground in Russia than Trani does. As for him being a Russian history expert, perhaps, but as part of my job I spent lots of time talking with academics, economists and Russian officials, including Boris Yeltsin. I never heard Trani's name but look forward to reading some of his books.

Anyway, Trani's getting some payback. His legacy is important but highly mixed.

Peter Galuszka

From Cassandra to Sage

Finally, Marleen Durfee has prevailed. The peppy, fast-talking, middle-aged woman is seeing what she warned about becoming reality and looks forward to a brighter day. For most of this decade, the Pennsylvania native has harangued the Chesterfield Board of Supervisors about their mindlessly pro-growth development policies. And now, the turkeys have come home to roost.

We met for a story I wrote for Richmond's Style Weekly about how a perfect storm of extremely tight financing, bad planning and steadily shifting demographics is starting to make profound changes in how suburban growth is emerging in the Capital area, if not in the rest of the country.

Huge megaprojects such as the 4,600 house Branner Station project in eastern Chesterfield have come to an abrupt halt. Three more in eastern Henrico are delayed, as is the Roseland megaproject in western Chesterfield.

The icing on the cake, however, is Magnolia Green, a southwestern Chesterfield megaproject on the books for 20 years. The project which would project more exurbia mess even farther down the crowded Hull Street corridor struck financing shoals. When an auction was held last month to sell off a half-built golf course and lots for most of the project's 4,886 homes, there were no bidders. About three dozen or so homes have been built in piney woods of unbuilt roads and unpoured concrete.

Since 2000, Durfee has acted as a self-styled watchdog on out of control growth. "Residential is a big drain on society and the board of supervisors didn't understand this. They thought that building more homes paid for itself," she told me in a restaurant's outdoor patio.

Durfee had been a professional activist against drunk driving and worked in Pennsylvania and Lousiana before moving to Chesterfield County in 1986. She used some of her experience in her field on growth policies when she realized was was happening with Chesterfield. "There used to be 20 temporary buildings to handle school overcapacity. Now they are 200," he says. Police coverage is stretched much more thinly than the public realizes. When a new high school is built, catch-up style, it is almost immediately at full capacity.

How come? A lot of it has to do with history and the political culture of Chesterfield County, which at more than 400 square miles is almost twice the size of Henrico, Richmond's other big suburban county. Back in the 1950s, state road planners put Interstate 64 through Henrico, not Chesterfield, giving Henrico a better tax base because it provided commercial nodes for development at every cloverleaf.

Chesterfield, meanwhile, was stuck in its sleepy Southern-style way of doing business. Elected officials were good old boys and girls who made a fetish about being "Chesterfield-born" and were sops for every development project that came down the pike. Trouble was, their proud insularity made them woefully ignorant of suburban growth and in the 1990s on, they made stupid decision after stupid decision.

The good old boy and girl crowd never got the math that houses can't pay for their demands on services. For that you need extra retail and industry. They never considered how dependent upon cars the residential projects they approved were, leading to a host of other problems, such as more street congestion, more air pollution, longer commuting times, and even, according to a recent American Pediatric Association study, a new generation of fat children.

Durfee, often put down as a Yankee "come here" by professional Southerners, says she got involved in "smart growth" policies after consulting her twin brother, who is an urban planner. She attended scores of planning and board of supervisors meetings, endured insults that she was a stupid meddler and faced the wrath of Realtors, builders and other parts of housing-industrial complex. For a number of years, Chesterfield's board acted as anything but a democratic institution. Citizens asking tough questions at public meetings were routinely shouted down and put down and in one case, arrested after refusing to obey orders to shut up.

"I would go meetings think they'd be pro-active, but they were using outdated plans from 1989 to 1991. They just didn't understand, Durfee says. Magnolia Green, for instance, was approved for rezoning in 1991 and like many projects in Chesterfield, sat dormant for years.

Superviors did not heed long-term predictions that the demographic patterns that favored Chesterfield's family-oriented growth patterns in the 1980s and 1990s were coming to an abrupt halt now. Baby boomers who wanted the house and lot and land for their kids now aren't willing to upsize after their kids move on. The kids themselves tend not to want big, single family houses on big lots, preferring smaller units closer to urban centers.

The result, according to Chesterfield's planning deparment, is that the county has about 50,000 rezoned lots not yet built upon. That's more than the rest of suburban Richmond combined and exceeds even the number in Loudoun County, once the nation's fastest-growing suburban area. Builders complain that a lot of these rezoned lots are in places where people don't want to live, ignoring the fact that they were cheerleaders for rezoning back in the day. And, due to peculiarities in state law, it is very hard to downzone upzoned property. So who knows what will happen to places such as Magnolia Green.

As for Durfee, she prevailed in 2007 elections and won a supervisor's position in a tight, four-candidate race. She says that the county is upgrading its comprehensive plan and for the first time in decades will look at growth on a holistic, rather than piecemeal, basis. And for someone treated like the County Idiot for many years, she's suddenly looking pretty savvy.

Peter Galuszka

ADDICTED TO AUTONOMOBILES

ADDICTION TO AUTONOMOBILES – AND THE SETTLEMENT PATTERN THAT AUTONOMOBILES SPAWN – IS THE DRIVING FORCE COLLAPSING A SOCIETY THAT HAS BECOME DEPENDENT ON LARGE, PRIVATE VEHICLES FOR MOBILITY AND ACCESS.

General Motors filed for bankruptcy yesterday. This is only the latest in a string of events that document how the Autonomobile Industrial Complex in the US of A is suffering.

How can one explain why some of the largest and most revered Enterprises on the Planet got to this place? (See “Inexhaustible Icon: GM Has Left Its Brand on the Cultural Landscape” in today’s Wapo.)

The simple answer is:

• Households that can AFFORD a new Large, Private Vehicle already have one – or two or three. Not only that but many new cars have three or four years of free maintenance and a 100,000 mile warranty. If one lost 40% of their shelter ‘investment’ and 60% of their retirement nest egg in the past year, why would they buy a new car?

• Households who NEED a new vehicle cannot afford one now that loans do not grow on trees. What those Households NEED is a small efficient vehicle. They ALSO NEED settlement patterns that require far less driving. (See German / American comparison noted below.)

No major Autonomobile Enterprise is offering vehicles that match citizen needs and Agencies, Enterprises and Institutions are not yet evolving functional settlement patterns.

What manner of a Enterprise strategy results in a whole industry sector selling themselves out of a market?

The one that comes to mind is aggressive drug cartels. Sell, sell, sell – push the product until there is almost one left who is not addicted and broke or already has a big stash.

Autonomobile Enterprises have acted exactly like drug cartels. With the help of Agencies (voters LOVE Large, Private Vehicles so long as they do not have to pay the full cost) and workers (unions LOVE high wages), Autonomobile Enterprises have addicted five generations of citizens to cheap energy and big, status-establishing / ego-messaging Autonomobiles.

These Autonomobiles demand a disaggregated and dysfunctional settlement patterns to operate.

After 90 years of selling four wheeled drugs, there is no alternative for Mobility and Access for the majority of Americans.

When the economy hit a rough patch due to dependence on unsustainable growth, unsustainable debt and Mass OverConsumption, citizens found themselves without any need for a new car and / or trapped with settlement patterns that are the inevitable result of Autonomobile dependence.

Bottom line: Citizens of the US of A are addicted to Autonomobiles. (See again US of A / German comparison below)

Many citizens are coming to grips with the reality that they and their Organization have:

1. Created a Global Financial System that has turned investment into gambling

2. Fueled a feeding frenzy that resulted in the Wrong Size House / Wrong Location Shelter Implosion

3. Paid no attention to the imbalance of trade, the widening Wealth Gap or unsustainable debt – public and private.

4. Championed Mass OverConsumption funded by depletion of Natural Capital

In their May newsletter, Ecocities Emerging’s Kirsten Miller makes a nice case for Autonomobiles being “The Sacred Cow of consumption.” (EMR would say the Sacred Cow of Mass OverConsumption) Ms. Miller uses the impact of the Tata mini in India as a jumping off place.

Icons that are ‘sacred’ normally reside in the Social Sphere. The addiction to Autonomobiles is also an Economic Sphere catastrophe and a Physical Sphere impossibility. (See The Large, Private Vehicle Mobility Myth.)

Citizens need smaller, more durable, more easily repaired and FAR more fuel efficient vehicles to bridge the gap until settlement patterns evolve to require fewer vehicles of any kind.

That is not what the current administration is betting on to recover the billions it has invested in GM. They are talking about slightly less consumptive vehicles and no Fundamental Transformation of the settlement pattern. (See today’s WaPo headline: “U. S. Bets Billions on GM’s Resurgence. Also see the two stories under the full page banner headline: “Flickers of Hope for U. S. Economy Belie the Distance From Recovery” and “Obama Unveils Plan for Brief Bankruptcy, Nationalization.”

For a very good summary of why the US of A did not have to get into this predicament see the April 2009 study from Brookings “Making Transportation Sustainable: Insights from Germany.”
The report documents how the US of A could have used far less land for urban land uses and created a far smaller ecological footprint with increased quality of life for all – including the 12.5 Percenters.

The question is: Is it too late to obtain a sustainable trajectory? Without Fundamental Transformation of settlement patterns, conditions will only get worse.

The expectations are unrealistic. On the day GM filed for bankruptcy that gambling venue call the NY Stock Exchange jumped over 200 points on rumors and shadows. (See WaPo story above “Flickers of Hope...”

Oil is up again on the hope that consumption will increase.

There is also hope of economic recovery is based such solid indicators of economic rebound as a rise in the Indian stock market last week. That is not a reflection of the Blackfeet and the Sioux selling more cattle, it is the response to an election in India that some think will allow the citizens of India to ride the Tiger a little longer.

Irony of irony’s is that for every recession since WW II selling cars and houses has been the cure for economic pain. Now they are the root cause of the Great Recession (See Steven Mufson’s story “Once a Recession Remedy, GM’s Empire Falls” in today’s Wapo.

EMR

WAL*MART AND THE DECLINE OF CIVILIZATION

WAL*MART WILL NOT BE THE CAUSE OF CIVILIZATIONS COLLAPSE BUT IT IS A GOOD BELLWETHER ON THE CURRENT TRAJECTORY

Two comments on the recent post NOTE ON WAL*MART require further consideration.


On 5/28/09 at 3:49 PM TooManyTaxes said:

“I'm not sure whether this one has been asked before. If so, I apologize.”

No need to apologize TMT, it is hard to tell in the midst of all the baseless filibuster.

TMT asked about Wal*Mart’s subsidy. Before EMR responds to the specific questions it is important to note that TMT put his / her finger on one of the most important overarching problem facing contemporary society:

NO ONE is YET paying the full cost of contemporary, technology and competition-driven human ‘civilization.’ The current debt is overwhelming and grows every day.

EMR plans to address the consequences of the failure to acknowledge the size and scope of this negative balance in a future post.

In the meantime, here is a quick summary of four Spheres in which US of A citizens are going into debt to pay for unsustainable contemporary lifestyles and settlement patterns:

1. Total Debt – public and private: The numbers run from around $50 Trillion to over $70 Trillion for the total debt depending on ones assumptions. Total debt has grown steadily since 1973 when everyone should have known it was time to tighten belts. It has grown exponentially since 1980. Currently every Household of four owes about $675,000 to pay off public and private debt.

2. External Debt – the part of $50 Trillion to $70 Trillion Total Debt that is owed to those outside the US of A – is $13.7 Trillion according to the table Larry Gross cited recently. That is 99.95% of GNP which is not shrinking. It is immoral to pass Total Debt on the future generations without the resources to repay it or any benefit from the ‘investment.’ It is impossible to ignore debt to those outside the US of A. Jim Bacon recently asked the question: When will the Chinese stop loaning the US of A money to pay for deficit spending?

3. The cost of burning through Natural Capital is a far larger amount than Total Debt. This debt includes the cost of both non-renewable resources but also hard to renew resources. The cost of the Mass OverConsumption is stupendous. Even if citizens and their Agencies had the money, there is no place to ‘buy’ replacements. The debt is not quantifiable because the total cost includes the price of consumption of as yet un-calculated impacts. The Total Cost of the unsustainable trajectory is beyond current comprehension.

4. The infrastructure deficit. Infrastructure has been allowed to deteriorate without reinvestment. There is also the problem that the existing infrastructure – including most of that to be repaired with ‘stimulosus’ funds – supports unsustainable settlement patterns.

If one wants a chilling experience and a rude awakening, thumb through Kirkpatrick Sale’s book Human Scale published in 1980. Sale provides a comprehensive list of the reasons why there needed to be Fundamental Transformation in 1980. None of his examples are new but Sale provides a very comprehensive summary of what MIGHT happen from a 1980s perspective. It turns out to be a listing of what DID happen since 1980.

1980 was just after what Reich calls “The Almost Golden Age.” A lot of folks were living quite well, thank you – but the trends were already running against those in the bottom half of the Ziggurat.

In 1980 the Total Debt (Sphere 1. above) was around $12.5 Trillion in 1980 dollars – one fifth of today’s total.

In 1980 there was a positive trade balance (Sphere 2. above) and it had not been long since the US of A stopped being a net exporter of energy.

In 1980 the resources to support an advanced civilization were in much better shape (Sphere 3. above) ground water was not depleted and contaminated, marine resources were not in steep decline and more petroleum was being discovered that consumed.

In 1980 the infrastructure (Sphere 4. above) could have been much more easily evolved to support functional human settlement patterns.

Sale was not alone in seeing the cissies on the horizon but his listing of the components is compelling. EMR did not know Sale but shared most of his concerns at the time and had since the 1973 Wake-Up call.

Readers may recall the 1980 was the year the citizens elected a president that declared “Morning in America” and ridiculed all who were concerned about the trajectory of “American Exceptionalism” – “there you go again...”

The comments concerning population (by TMT) and on having passed the tipping (by Larry Gross) on the Climate Change Post of 30 May are on point. Larry may be right – it may be too late to salvage civilization as we know it. More on that in a later post.

Now to the specific questions that TMT raised:

“Let's assume that Walmart does NOT pay its full locational costs. Who pays those costs?”

We go into this in detail and cite sources in PART FOUR – THE PROBLEM WITH CARS Chapter 10 – Learning From Big Boxes. The short answer is that to the extent these costs are now being paid by ANYONE (and not just piling up in the four Spheres noted above), the majority of the costs are picked up by all tax payers to pay for transport, infrastructure and training and by customers. (Customers do not account for the time and resources they expend to secure the “bargains”)

“How do we know that? How much do they pay?”

Actually there are simple calculators on line to calculate “the cost of a Wal*Mart” – one plugs in their Community and Region numbers and reads out the Wal*Mart costs. These back-of-the-envelope calculations document that if one added up ALL the costs the deficit would be very substantial.

“Does Walmart keep its subsidy? Or does it pass it along to its customers?”

They “pass along” only enough to maintain the APPEARANCE of offering bargains. After all, Wal*Mart is an Enterprise and Enterprises have been successful spending more on advertising the ILLUSION of a bargain than in passed on real savings.

“If, the latter is true, is there any overlap between those who pay subsidies to Walmart and those to whom Walmart passes along the subsidies?”

There is some overlap but not nearly enough to cover the costs – see note on drug costs below.

“Please note that I am not arguing for subsidies. I just want to understand EMR's position.

“TMT”

Footnote: Since the Wal*Mart post last week, EMR had a conversation with a woman who had just completed a comprehensive comparison of the costs of Drugs for a couple on Medicare. Both Wal*Mart and the on-line drug company which was the “preferred” vendor of the drug supplement coverage provider were calculated. When a real market basket of drugs was evaluated the local Safeway was cheaper than Wal*Mart OR the on-line source. Now consider the elderly folks who drive miles to get to a Wal*Mart to “save money” on their drugs. While they are there, they will buy a lot of other stuff that is not a bargain either.


On 5/28/09 at 7:33 AM Larry said

“The problem I have with EMR's stance on Walmart is this.

“He does not acknowledge the validity of a worldwide logistics supply network for goods and services...”

Larry, please document ANYPLACE EMR has EVER indicated he does not acknowledge the existence or ‘validity’ of long supply chains. The issue is NOT ‘validity,’ it is paying the full cost.

See EU environmental group T&E’s calculations on fair allocation of both surface and air freight. Long supply lines mean high costs, Period. These costs, and other location-variable costs are subsidized in many direct and indirect ways.

The higher energy prices go, the more Regional import replacement makes sense.

“it appears that there is absolutely no version of any kind whatsoever of a WalMart that is acceptable under any circumstances.”

All EMR asks it that those who ship long distance pay the full cost of their activities – level the playing field.

“In other words, the concept itself is unacceptable.”

If you mean the concept of living off subsidies in unacceptable, you are right. See prior comment on the value of debt racked up to pay for Mass OverConsumption.

“If he objects to the underlying concept that WalMart exploits to maximum advantage...
then, he's also essentially rejecting any other retailer than also bases their business model on the same concept”.

That is true.

“So.. you can wipe off the map... Target, Home Depot, Lowes, McDonalds, etc, etc, just about every national chain that one can think of.”

Unless they pay the full cost of their activities they are eroding the potential for achieving a sustainable trajectory for civilization.

“He touched on this a couple of times before and what I got out of it was that he thinks that virtually all products need to come from the NUR and the USR but he's always been mostly murky about what USRs are (and are not) and what the logistics supply functionality looks like between the USR(s) (?) and the NUR(s).”

Not ‘murky’ at all, Larry has just never bothered to read or try to understand.

“and perhaps the most paradoxical is the fact that the modern logistics supply network.. is a couple thousand years old and always evolving and optimizing. We find jugs of wine ..that old in the Mediterranean that were on their way from somewhere to somewhere else ... as opposed to being grown locally and consumed locally.”

Larry has already forgotten that EMR is familiar with the history of trade and the importance of the emergence of Regional Neolithic Trading Villages 10,000 to 13,000 years ago and the extensive trading systems that have evolved since that time.

If buyers are willing to pay the FULL cost for items shipped long distances – no problem.

Those wine jugs “in the Mediterranean” went down with vessels that carried a knowledgeable wine buyer. Wine buyers had direct relationships with those from whom he bought the wine. Further if the person to whom he sold the wine in Rome, got sick he might lose his head. Those relationships do not now exist with current long supply lines.

Footnote: To keep perfumed wine fresh it was stored in airtight lead lined jugs and that resulted in lead poisoning of the elite who could afford imported wine. Testing for lead poisoning was not available in Imperial Rome so some wine merchants got off the hook.

It is clear that only a few in Rome or Carthage enjoyed imported wine. Most got their wine from the Region.

The bottom line is that if all the cost of transport and of monitoring, inspections, testing and enforcement to insure a safe product were added to the costs of the goods they would not be cheap. Ask the owners of those sick and dead pets or those exposed to toxic chemicals in manufactured products what sort of testing they would like to see.

“Just about every port in the world ..is an integral part of the settlement pattern it is part of.
sometimes.. the settlement pattern itself came second...and actually grew up around the port....”

Not sure what this has to do with the real price of tea or pet food.

“such ports are definitely not New Urban Regions... they are very clearly the ORIGINAL Urban Regions..with grid streets, shops at street level with living space above... etc..etc...”

Again Larry is lost in scale. Worse, he has never bothered to understand what a New Urban Region is. The only possible rationale for this statement is that Larry thinks ‘New Urban Region’ has something to do with Cluster-scale, Neighborhood-scale and Village-scale projects designed by New Urbanists. It does not.

Places that were major ports historically – even those that were silted in like Brugge – are now integral components of New Urban Regions. For example Ostia in the Roma NUR.

“virtually everything that NEW Urban Regions seem to be trying to emulate now days..”

?EMR has no idea what this means?

“EXCEPT when it comes to the logistics supply network... of which...advocates such as EMR are mostly mute and when they do speak of it.. they do in broad terms... with opinions that WalMarts ..are NOT..the Correct Way to do it.”

“so.. I ask....

“what is...

“and the silence is deafening.”

If one chooses not to listen or to learn...


EMR

Could Virginia Become a Christian Theocracy?

One of my recurring nightmares is that I wake up one morning to find Virginia and the U.S. transformed into a right-wing theocracy.

If I go to a public library, I find my Internet access is severely restricted to information that a government committee has deemed morally and politically acceptable. A bourbon and water in my home at 6 p.m. is verboten. Dancing: forget it. Bible study classes are mandatory. If I falter in any way from the proscribed "norm," cultural G-men and women ("G" for "Government" and "God") will remove me to a self-help and brainwashing group.

In the past couple of years, I will admit, this nightmare has been on the wane. Political fortunes have eluded Virginia's religious right with the election of moderates such as Mark Warner, Jim Webb, Tim Kaine and, of course, Barack Obama who represented the first time the Old Dominion has gone Democratic presidentially since the mid-1960s.

The state Republican Party, following disaster after disaster, is still trying to get its act together, meaning that the radical, social and religious wing of the party has been on the run.

But maybe not. The GOP, meeting in Richmond over the weekend, nominated hard right former attorney general Bob McDonnell for governor and state Sen. Ken Cuccinelli for attorney general. McDonnell is a grad from Regent University Law School, a creation of televangelist Pat Robertson who has for decades projected his own version of Christ-driven government. Cuccinelli is a pro-life fanatic, who, according to The Washington Post, is unwilling to follow fellow Republicans' advice and tone down any divisive social conservatism that turns off voters.

While this is happening, controversy rages in Lynchburg, where Liberty University, the creation of another televangelist, the late Jerry Falwell, is all but banning a Democratic Club for students. Incredibly, Falwell's son, the school's leader, says that the Democratic Party has immoral ideals, so the club is being done away with.

Religious schools have their place and there are many fine ones, indeed. But Liberty seems to go way over the top in policing student behavior. According to Kevin Roose, a Brown student who spent an undercover semester at Liberty pretending to be an evangelical Christian, students must follow a 46-page "Code of Conduct" that forbids drinking, smoking, dancing and "hugging" that lasts for more than three seconds (do they all carry stopwatches?). In an interview with National Public Radio, Roose says that the courses he took were difficult and informative. But he balked at one exam question: "Was Noah's Ark big enough to accommodate various species of dinosaurs?"

That reminds me of a story the Richmond Times-Dispatch did long ago, back when it actually did some reporting rather than just holding Phil Donahue-style encounter groups and calling it community service. At one class infiltrated by a TD reporter, the professor was ranting against rebellious Danish philosopher and theologian Soren Kierkegaard, but the professor had badly misspelled his name on the blackboard. At the time, founder Falwell was moving the school from some temporary mobile homes to real buildings. But the reporter noted that in admissions brochures, the pamphlets showed the multi-story Virginia National Bank building downtown but with the VNB logo airbrushed out. The idea seemed to be to pretend the building was part of the university.

From these humble beginnings, Liberty is now banning the Democratic Party.

There's another school in the category. Patrick Henry College in Purcellville in far western Loudoun County has a conduct code very similar to Liberty's. It was founded in 2000 by Michael P. Farris, a right wing constitutional lawyer who gained fame pushing home schooling.

Loudoun, some of you may remember, had some controversies about seriously restricting the Internet at the county's public libraries because some little Pugsley feeling his teenaged hormones might pick up some porn. It was quite a tussle. And now we find that Patrick Henry grads have been interning in the library system.

That's not all. Taking advantage of its proximity to Washington and its government agencies, Patrick Henry has courses tailored to get "Christian" minded men and women to find work at the CIA, DIA, DEA, FBI, NSA, Homeland Security and so forth. Terrorism is a threat and patriotism is fine, but how do you know that some religious fanatics might go over the line and start monitoring your email and telephone conversations for information they consider ethically subversive and "anti-Christian?"

This is not to say that such schools produce Bible thumping robotons. The lifeguard at my neighborhood pool is a Liberty student who is very conscientious watching the little kids and has a knack for getting along well with them. I worked once with a Liberty grad who was good at what he did and had a sense of humor. We joked about moving to Lynchburg and starting an alternative newspaper titled  "Beelzebub."

But it's not the grads themselves that I really worry about. It is the bosses at these schools who wrap themselves in the American flag and then trash American principles of freedom of speech and political choice. All the while, they evoke the usual Virginia political thinkers such as Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison whose views are actually the polar opposite of theirs.

Peter Galuszka