If all of a sudden you were put in charge of developing the model society, chances are you wouldn’t choose for your template an area with double-digit unemployment, chronically low levels of education, social disorders as far as the eye can see and a political system that for generations has exalted cronyism as its distinguishing feature.

“Entering the race? Goode won’t say,” read the headline on the Danville Register & Bee’s website the other day (godanriver.com). Uh-oh. Sounds like our former Congressman-For-Life hasn’t adjusted very well to Life-Out-Of-Congress.

Gov. Bob McDonnell, seemingly in violation of the cardinal rule of his young administration, finally weighed in on a pressing budget matter Monday. The Governor's Office announced that McDonnell would reverse the plan by his predecessor, Tim Kaine, to freeze the local composite index used to apportion funding for Virginia's 134 school divisions. McDonnell's decision has the practical effect of helping northern Virginia, whose schools stood to lose about $138 million under the index freeze, while cutting funds for 97 school systems in mostly poorer rural and urban communities.

From the Department of This Can’t Be Right comes the headline: “Virginia legislators might double cuts in effort to balance state budget.” (From the Bristol Herald-Courier, Jan. 31 edition; a hat tip to virginiatomorrow.com — the blog run by former VCU professor and political pundit Bob Holsworth — for bringing the article to the attention of readers east.)

I know it's considered bad form to jump on the new guy before he's even had a chance to settle into the job, but is anyone else struck by how reluctant our new governor is to face up to reality?

Monday night took me to South Hill for the annual Mecklenburg County NAACP Freedom Fund banquet honoring the birthday of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The keynote speaker was King Salim Khalfani, executive director of the Virginia State Conference NAACP. I’ve probably covered the Freedom Fund banquet a dozen times over the years, and it’s always a well-attended event with good speakers (Halifax County’s own Rev. Roger Ford was the keynoter last year). But Khalfani was a revelation: he gave a scorching talk that was funny, raw and truthful almost to a fault. Few escaped his wrath, from Barack Obama to Tim Kaine to the Virginia General Assembly (“that bunch of thugs”) to a host of politicians and celebrities on down the line. Mostly, Khalfani took the wood to his audience, telling them if it’s change they want, they had better work for it. In light of other events this week, his message couldn’t have been more perfectly timed.