BVBL Comes aboard the Bob Marshall Cyberexpress

Black Velvet Bruce Li (a.k.a Greg L.), arguably the most influential blogger in the Commonwealth (and inarguably the most oft-quoted in my favorite paper: the Washington Examiner, but I digress), is now a Blogger 4 Bob.

Here’s his take on Marshall’s battle against the Northern Virginia Tax – errrrr, Transportation – Authority.  Some choice cuts:

Bob Marshall’s lawsuit objects to the establishment of the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority as an agency with the power to impose and collect taxes on state constitutional grounds.  In Virginia, only elected officials can impose taxes, and none of the decision makers on the NVTA are directly elected, but are appointed by local governing bodies.  Some aren’t elected by anyone at all. 

. . .

A hearing on the lawsuit is scheduled for January 8th, and while Hampton Roads deferred collection of these new taxes until April — allowing the legal basis for these taxes to be settled before they start collecting them, the NVTA is plowing ahead anyways.  It’s an awfully risky move for the NVTA.  If they lose, it’s going to be a huge mess.

The other fallout here if the NVTA gets caught operating in an unconstitutional manner is that Delegate Bob Marshall, who is almost certain to make a bid for the United States Senate this year, is going to pull off another incredibly high-profile victory.  As author of the wildly popular Marshall-Newman Marriage Amendment, he’s got solid credentials on moral issues to take on the campaign trail.  If he manages a win on protecting the constitution from unlawful attempts to hike taxes, his credentials as a fiscal conservative will be stratospheric.  But the fallout of a victory here could easily be much larger than that.

. . .

The great transportation compromise of 2007 has turned out to be much less politically rewarding for it’s promoters than originally hoped for, and is now a convenient whipping boy employed by anyone challenging the political establishment with it’s strange mix of abusive driver fees, tax hikes, and bond issues.  In an attempt to make every legislator needed to support it marginally happy, it’s managed to include something for everyone to hate . . . While most were rushing towards getting the compromise done so they could trumpet that Republicans had managed to actually do something to solve the number one issue in the commonwealth at the time, a few, a very few, started calling foul.  Bob Marshall was the lead voice in that dissent, and very publicly put himself at odds with the House leadership in the process.

 . . .

If it turns out that they ignored an unconstitutional scheme within this compromise, the naysayers will get to demonstrate that they can be trusted to do the right thing, even when it’s not politically convenient.  When voter’s trust of their elected officials is clearly a scarce commodity (just look at Congressional approval ratings), having someone not only call out the popular majority for doing something wrong, but endlessly bull-dogging that issue to completion taps into a host of political lore that is positively massive.

It’s the underdog who fought for the right thing against all odds, and won.  It’s the outsider who refused to compromise his principles for political convenience.  It’s the legislator that got consistently punished by the leadership for doing the right thing and ultimately prevailed.  Americans love an iconoclast like this who chooses the hard moral right over the easy moral wrong, and not only do they love it, but they’re inclined to trust those who do it.  Bob Marshall was made for this role, as this isn’t some recent political conversion, but a consistent pattern of behavior he has demonstrated throughout his political career.  If there is anyone who consistently flies in the face of conventional political wisdom while defending a well known set of principles, Bob Marshall is the guy.  Winning this one would make sure that everyone in the Commonwealth found out about it.

Could you imagine a guy like this in the United States Senate?  They’d have to start wearing helmets at Senate Committee meetings, it would shake them up that much.

It is exactly for this reason (standing up for principle and refusing to bend with the political wind) that Bob Marshall has earned the respect and support of his constituents, including 2,500 voters who supported Democratic candidates for State Senate last year (Marshall performed 10 points better than his up-ballot ticket mates, and six points better than the Democratic State Senate candidates in his district).

Moreover, considering how, um “grateful” the people of Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia were over this (of the four State Senate seats lost to the Democrats, two were in NoVa, and two in Hampton Roads, ditto on the four House seats the Democrats picked up), Marshall would become an instant hero for ending the regional monstrosities and saving the taxpayers from getting fleeced.

BVBL is one of those taxpayers, and we’re thrilled to join him (hey, he’s much bigger than we are in the blogosphere, so we join him) in supporting Bob Marshall.