Barnie Day was a Democratic delegate from Patrick County from his election in 1997 through the 2001 session. A former county administrator and business owner, he is now a banker.

A $100 million Robin-Hood-in-reverse redistribution of wealth in this state is just beginning. As recent legislative swindles go, this one is low profile and low dollar. It is not in the same league with the billion dollar shift from the have-nots to the haves that was the car tax giveback, but it is bad enough. What makes this one worse is the lack of debate. The car tax was debated. That heist was done in the open, in broad daylight.

This swindle never had a focal point. It got lost in the scuffle over judgeships and abortion and DMV closings.

Virginia Republicans skillfully package themselves as anti-tax protectors of the realm, but, like thieving mice in the night, they have engineered this shift piecemeal, one little snippet at a time -- a small fee increase here, a price increase there. They sign no-tax pledges and thump their chests on the floors of the House and Senate, but during this session of the General Assembly Virginia Republicans laid $100 million in increased fees of one sort of another onto the backs of Virginia's working families -- while cutting more than $100 hundred million in taxes to benefit a few dead millionaires.

Many of us wondered how on earth thinking legislators could agree to abolish Virginia's estate tax, a tax that affects 2,000 multimillionaires, and a few billionaires, but takes more than a $100 million out of a budget that is already so desperately constrained that we're stripping worthy things out wholesale.

Now it is clear. The Republican majority in the House and Senate is simply shifting that burden from millionaires to Virginia's working families.

And there is a reason for that. Virginia's working folks have no lobby. They don't speak as one. Many of them don't even look up from the grindstones they tend. They don't have time. They can't be distracted. They move wordlessly, determinedly to the day-to-day tasks of making livings for their families -- not so much to the building of estates for their heirs. And Republicans know that.

They're not cutting that revenue. They're putting it back into the pockets of millionaires and taking it from wage earners, from nine-to-fivers, from clock punchers, from school teachers and nurses, from truck drivers and coal miners, from clerks and cabbies, from loggers and fishermen, from secretaries and tellers. Sure, they're cutting taxes … for Virginia's very tip-top wealthiest, but they increasing the burden for millions of average, day-to-day working Virginians.

Such is the text and nature, the substance, the actuality of this subtle swindle.

To be sure, Democrats have complicity in this matter. Some have willingly participated. Others have acquiesced by their silence, by their lack of dissent. Their hands are not clean here. Some among them, though, may redeem themselves. Some among them will see this swindle, this shift, this picking of working Virginians' pockets, as an opportunity and will make this issue the battle cry of the coming election season. If handled adroitly, this single issue has enormous potential to shape the tone and tenor of the election debates. It should be on the lips of every candidate, indeed, of every partisan, everywhere.

The issue can be simply shaped. What side were you on in the swindle? Were you with the millionaires, or were you with working Virginians? For Virginia Democrats, there can be only one answer to that one.