Wasn't Tim working under the direct advice of the Virginia Attorney General on the non-enforcement against out-of-staters??? And you won't see Tim throwing that mud around even if it is true, because as a good leader he has to run a team effort with the players he has to work with like a Republican AG (whom won by what was it about 300 votes) and Republican Lt Gov.

appears his governorship is unraveling before our eyes. Now with a big 1.2B deficit? What Kaine doesn't seem to get is HE is the boss. He's the elected governor. HE is a democrat. Two years into this thing he needs to stand up and take that role. Bipartianship is never going to work with this crowd as we see now how Howell is publically stabbing him in the back. But Kaine continues to be the nice guy-at his own peril and ours. Sad really.

The whole reason why those abuser fees are there is because Howell will not raise taxes in a sensible way. The abuser fees are a courtesy to the Republicans, and if they are going to try to blame Kaine, Kaine should turn around and just express the facts the way there are something along the lines of:

"We could have had a 2 cent increase (or whatever the amount would be) in fuel tax or abuser fees, and the Republicans picked the fees. "

Bill Howell et al. are not and will never be Tim Kaine's friends.  It's time to start letting the citizens of Virginia know exactly what's going on here.

he should blame them over and over and over in every speech, in every meeting. The citizens aren't stupid. Everyone knows the rethugs refuse to raise taxes for our infrastructure. Wait til one of our bridges fall down. Boy then you'll see some screeching and howling from the right-of course blaming Tim Kaine.

But I fear kaine still wants to take the high road. Be nice, be bipartisian, make all the appointments to various boards with folks that the rethugs like.

But the real question remains-what the hell are we going to do now with this huge deficit? sit in the corner and cry while the rethugs beat Kaine and the democrats over the head? When it's THEIR fault?
Problem is, always has been, Democrats don't know how to fight. Period.

and don't rely on the Governor to fight the battle alone. As was pointed out here (and elsewhere by me) Kaine has many months left in his term, and he must work with Howell and the rest of the Republican cabal if he is going to get anything done. As I recall, we worried during the election about his nice guy attitude, but it worked.

It's up to us to defend Kaine, not attack him, too.

Therefore, we should all write our own Letters to the Editor, starting immediately, and send 'em to every newspaper in the Commonwealth, not just the biggies--- I mean, the locals, the weeklies, and so on. Possible Points to make might include:
1) Kaine was working to fulfill a campaign pledge, which Virginians approved enough to elect him
2) Republicans refused to agree to any transportation legislation until yanked into a secret meeting with Tom Davis and Ed Gillespie, who then introduced Speaker Howell to reality: i.e., that obstructing transportation legislation would result in the defeat of Republicans in November
3) Despite being chastized by Davis, Howell categorically refused anything called a tax increase to fund anything Kaine wanted, which left them with a mess of so-called abuser fees and other miscellaneous little charges, all of which they had to call "fees" but are really taxes anyway, in order to attempt to fund the most minimal of transportation improvements
4) Once the transportation bill was passed and sent to Kaine, legislators including many Republicans begged Kaine to "fix" the mess they had passed---
5) The Republicans at the time may have thought Kaine would veto it, and they could then attack him for that, but he did his governor's chore, and made modifications according to the (Republican) Attorney General's advice
6) Bottom line: the transportation bill was a begrudging effort by Assembly Republicans which Kaine, in a bipartisan effort to govern, modified as much as possible, and signed. If there are mistakes in it, they are almost completely those of the Republicans.  As for Kaine, he tried to improve it but it's like putting lipstick on a pig. Or trying to make a lace doily out of a sow's ear, and so on...