Month: June 2014
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The First to Join the Luddite Parade
by James A. Bacon Upstart transportation companies Uber and Lyft, which link drivers and passengers by means of a smart phone, have run into resistance from taxicab companies and municipal regulators around the country. But Virginia is the first state to crack down on the two companies, contends Ken Cuccinelli, former attorney general, in a Sunday…
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Two UMW Daughters of the ’60s
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in Business and Economy, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Environment, Federal issues, Government workers and pensions, Gun rights, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, LGBQT, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and Race Relations, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, UncategorizedBy Peter Galuszka Just a few days ago, Elena Siddall, a Mathews County Republican activist and Tea Party Patriot, posted her account on the Rebellion of being a social worker in New York in the 1960s and the wrong-headedness of Saul Alinsky, a leftist organizer who had had a lot of influence back in the…
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Child Services in the Shadow of Cloward and Piven
by Elena Siddall In 1963 I graduated from Mary Washington College of the University of Virginia, with a BA degree in Pre-Foreign Service and headed for New York City. The degree did not get me a job as translator at the United Nations, so I answered an ad for Social Investigator in the Department of…
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Voluntary Sterilization? Great Idea!
by James A. Bacon Let us all applaud Ilona White, assistant prosecutor of Shenandoah County. She had the brilliant idea of offering Jessie Lee Herald, a 27-year-old man who had sired seven children by six different women, the option of undergoing a vasectomy in exchange for a five-year reduction in his prison term. Her motive…
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U.S. 460: Peeling Back the Onion
by James A. Bacon Structuring the U.S. 460 Connector as a public-private partnership (P3) shielded the $1.4 billion project from much of the oversight required for conventional Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) projects, found a confidential report by VDOT’s Assurance Compliance Division and the Office of the State Inspector General. As a consequence, the McDonnell administration…
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Sure Looks Like a Brain Drain
by James A. Bacon Richard Florida’s latest demographic research project presents an interesting twist on the old “domestic migration” data we’ve all seen (well, we’ve all seen it if we’re regular readers of Bacon’s Rebellion!) The U.S. Census tracks “domestic migration” — the movement of American citizens from one locale to another — and commentators have…
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Denying Truth on the Outer Banks
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in Business and Economy, Children and Families, Consumer Protection, Courts and law, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Infrastructure, Insurance, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Property rights, Public safety & health, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, Taxes, UncategorizedBy Peter Galuszka North Carolina’s Outer Banks have always been a touchstone for me – in as much as anyone can associate permanence with sandy islands being perpetually tossed around by tremendous wind and water forces. The Banks and I go back to 1954 and Hurricane Hazel when I was an infant. They mark many…
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Virginia Transportation in the Slow Lane
by James A. Bacon Alvin and Heidi Toffler once wrote about the mismatch in speeds at which private corporations and governments evolve in response to social, economic and technological change. Nowhere is that differential more obvious than the automobile sector. The automobile industry is a Ferrari blazing down the Interstate at 120 miles per hour while government is…
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Coming up: Car-Lite Burbs
A California developer is teaming with Daimler AG to bring buses, shuttles and ride sharing to an Orange County community — with no government subsidies.
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It’s Like Leaving Paris on Bastille Day
Now they tell me! The Bacon family has just made plans to spend the 4th of July watching fireworks at the national mall in Washington, D.C., only to read that WalletHub lists Richmond, of all places, as the No. 1 place to be in its 2014’s Best & Worst Cities for 4th of July Celebrations. Our humble home…
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More Evidence of Virginia’s Urban Renaissance
Urban geographer Richard Florida has published a map comparing population growth of “primary cities” (core jurisdictions) with growth in outlying localities in the United States’ 51 largest metropolitan regions. The map at left, extracted from Florida’s map published in CityLab, hones in on the metropolitan regions in the northeastern quadrant of the country. The Washington and Richmond…
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When the Bubble Pops
by James A. Bacon Northern Virginia is so much more prosperous than the Rest of Virginia that it’s difficult for we RoVians to appreciate what is happening north of the Rappahannock. But the picture isn’t pretty. Gripped by the realities of sequestration and budget cuts, the Washington region has one of the worst-performing economies in…
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From Budget Crisis to Constitutional Crisis
by James A. Bacon We live in truly extraordinary times in Virginia. Never in my 61 years have I had occasion to ask myself, “Do Virginians believe in the rule of law or the rule of men?” Governor Terry McAuliffe exercised his prerogative as governor yesterday to veto portions of the state budget passed by both…
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McAuliffe: Time for Some Real Ethics Reform
Peter Galuszka One can hardly blame Gov. Terry McAuliffe for ditching the General Assembly’s absurdly weak ethics panel along with deep-sixing the line items in the budget that restrict him from expanding Medicaid. Obviously, the nice-guy, bipartisan approach he had advocated simply isn’t possible with the likes of Tommy Norment and Bill Howell in the…
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Mobility vs. Access, Chesterfield vs. Manhattan
by James A. Bacon Luke Juday, writing in his personal blog, “Mapping the Commonwealth,” picks up the cudgel against a recent Wendell Cox essay that I inveighed against in, “Subsidize It, and They Will Come.” While I focused on the idea that a metropolitan strategy of building your way out of congestion is fiscal folly,…