Week’s End

WEEK'S END

A new report finds that Virginia's tax system is still regressive: Low-income earners pay a higher percentage of their income than high-income earners. Virginia shouldn't soak the rich, or the middle class. But it absolutely shouldn't be soaking the poor.

Richmond's Habitat for Humanity is leading the nation in innovation. Its plan to create a community land trust is a creative way to foster affordable housing: Buyers purchase the homes, but not the land under them, which stays in the trust.

Some potential buyers might worry that this could hurt a home's investment potential. But that's probably mistaken. Historically, the return on residential homes is far lower than the return on stocks. Reason? People assume that because "they're not making any more land," land for building is scarce, which will drive home prices up. But that's simply not the case. As Yale economist Robert Shiller has written, "we do not really have a land shortage."

Was anybody else surprised to hear President Obama insist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would be found guilty? A principal -- and largely justified -- complaint against military tribunals conducted during the Bush years held that they were kangaroo courts set up to produce a predetermined outcome. If part of the reason for trying KSM in civilian court is to show the world the U.S. no longer favors that approach, then Obama's ill-considered gaffe has just knocked the wind out of those sails.

During a meeting with the editorial staff of

The Times-Dispatch, Gov. Tim Kaine said he was proud to include sexual orientation in an executive order banning discrimination in the state workforce "for the first time." An alert reader notes that Kaine wasn't quite the first. Indeed, Kaine's order prompted Del. Bob Marshall to ask for an opinion from then-Attorney General Bob McDonnell, who noted that "On December 16, 2005, Governor Mark R. Warner revised Executive Order No. 1 adding sexual orientation to the list of protected classes under the Commonwealth's nondiscrimination policy." But n.b.: Warner's order came at the very end of his term; Kaine's order, at the very start of his.