Pandering, with a kick

I'm trying hard to look on the bright side. I really am.

The plan to deny unemployment benefits to a few dozen of Virginia's professional orchestra members - who make $35,000 or so a year - didn't pass. Pushed by the cash-strapped Richmond Symphony Orchestra board, this bill would have affected the state's 11 orchestras, singling out for punishment one profession that actually improves the quality of life in Virginia and helps attract businesses here.

It's dead. For now.

And a bill mandating that public schools investigate where each student was born and whether his parents are legally in the country died in committee.

But when I look at the Virginia General Assembly's overall focus this year, I find myself singing along with country star Taylor Swift:

Why you gotta be so mean?

The relentless efforts of the past five weeks to legislate morality won't help the unemployed get jobs. They won't teach students to write cogent essays or solve math equations. They won't build needed roads or repair bridges or widen tunnels.

What state lawmakers have done, rather than fix Virginia's problems, is pacify the far right at the expense of those living on the margins.

The House of Delegates, for example, took an already wrenching decision for a few women in poverty and made their heartache so much worse. Delegates banned the use of public money to pay for an abortion even when the woman's doctor has determined the baby will likely be born with a debilitating physical deformity or mental deficiency.

The short-term savings from that despicable action? $2,800. The likely long-term expenses, not to mention hardship? Indeterminate.

You have knocked me off my feet again...

Got me feeling like I'm nothing...

Calling me out when I'm wounded...

And all you're ever gonna be is mean.

The Senate, with the help of Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, approved a plan to test welfare recipients for drugs, even though studies have shown that welfare recipients are less likely to use drugs than the general population. Even though Florida discontinued its testing program when officials determined it did not root out drug addicts in the welfare system, save money or change behavior.

The bill's proponents said the legislation is intended to make sure people who get Temporary Assistance for Needy Families spend the money on their children, not on drugs.

You, with your... wildfire lies and your humiliation...

But you don't know what you don't know...

Why you gotta be so mean?

Swift's piece, which won Best Country Song at Sunday's Grammy Awards, seems tailor-made for Virginia's lawmakers, giddy with power.

Legislators who call themselves advocates of limited government have pushed an inordinate number of intrusive, overreaching bills this year. But legislation that kicks men and women when they're down is particularly mean.

And some of the common-sense bills that would have protected the vulnerable remain entombed in subcommittees, never to see the light of day.

One would have made it a misdemeanor to pen a fox or coyote and then set dogs free in the enclosure to kill it. Fox penning, a blood sport that has been banned in Florida, traps wild animals, which then are hunted and ripped apart by sometimes dozens of dogs.

I would've thought Virginia, having suffered national embarrassment in 2007 over Michael Vick's dogfights, would see fox penning as a cruel practice worthy of prosecution.

But thanks to the General Assembly, it's still perfectly legal. And mean.

Candy Hatcher is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot. Email: candy.hatcher@pilotonline.com