Year: 2012
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Even NAS Braniacs Have Unanswered Questions about Uranium Mining
by James A. Bacon The National Academy of Sciences report on uranium mining in Virginia covers a lot of ground, as anyone who peruses the 290-page document can attest. But the panel of co-authors attending a public presentation of the report in downtown Richmond last night conceded that there was a lot that they didn’t…
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More Talk of a New Potomac Crossing
Governor Bob McDonnell recently broached the idea of a new Potomac River crossing with Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, reports Toll Road News. No other project in the Washington, D.C., metro area has comparable potential for improving mobility and taking unnecessary traffic off Beltway, the trade publication quotes Transportation Secretary Sean Connaughton as saying. “We are starting…
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IG of the Day: Religiosity
Mississippi is the most religious state in the country, while Vermont and New Hampshire are tied for least religious. Virginia, where 42% of respondants to a recent Gallup poll described themselves as “very religious,” ranked with the middling states. — JAB
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What Baconauts Won’t Discuss
By Peter Galuszka Reading the Bacon’s Rebellion Blog always displays breathtaking contradictions. Chief among them is the huge contradiction between pushing “smart growth” and shunning any form of increasing gasoline taxation. The crux is that we have lots of horrendous sprawl in the state such as all of Northern Virginia, Route 3 in Fredericksburg and…
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Midtown Meltdown
Norfolk Midtown Tunnel. Photo credit: VDOT by James A. Bacon The controversy over tolls on the $2.1 billion Midtown Tunnel/Downtown Tunnel project in Hampton Roads is spreading statewide as transportation advocates in other parts of Virginia ponder the implications of what it means for them. In a missive distributed yesterday Robert Chase, president of the Northern…
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Veto Power for VDOT
VDOT would gain extensive powers over local transportation planning under a bill awaiting the governor’s signature. That makes local governments and citizen groups very nervous.
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Hate ObamaCare? Try Social Media
By Peter Galuszka For all the chatter before the U.S. Supreme Court and pundits, ObamaCare has raised critical questions striking at the heart of individual rights and the Constitution. Yet there’s another, far more powerful and potentially more sinister force out there that is far more ominous along similar grounds: social media. True, “social media”…
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IG of the Day: Virginia’s Impaired Waters
Virginia’s waters aren’t necessarily getting more polluted, but the Department of Environmental Quality is doing a better job of sampling Virginia’s rivers and streams, with the result that more dirty stretches of waterway are being found. This map shows the varying water quality across the state. Not much of it is pristine. Read the report.…
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The Lamentable Demise of the Daily Newspaper
I, for one, will miss daily newspapers when they expire, as it seems they inevitably will — and not just because I find it more convenient to scan headlines and read stories on newsprint than online. For all my complaints about the Mainstream Media, I will miss the ability of newspapers to cover important events and…
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Pencil Whipping Mass Transit
In my previous post, I objected to the Virginia state Senate voting to pump an additional $300 million into the Rail-to-Dulles heavy rail project without demanding more accountability from the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA), the entity in charge of overseeing design and construction. Now, let’s stop to think what happens when construction is complete and the…
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Kissing the Pig — Wrapped up in a Bow
by James A. Bacon When push comes to shove, are Virginia’s Republicans fiscal conservatives first or culture warriors first? We found out yesterday when the Senate Republicans and Democrats reached agreement to pass a state budget. Republicans succeeded in batting down a $3 million Democrat-inspired provision for the state to pay for ultrasounds required of…
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Kissing the Pig
by James A. Bacon The good news for Virginians from late last week is that Republicans and Democrats in the Senate Finance Committee broke their deadlock over the state budget. The bad news is… Senate Republicans and Democrats broke their deadlock. The only way to paper over the divide between the two parties, of course,…
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A Rare Civil Dialogue
Robert Reich by James A. Bacon Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer and liberal professor/author Robert Reich squared off in a civil and thoughtful debate at the Richmond Forum last night. Neither man changed my thinking but I enjoyed the dialogue immensely. I also walked away with one powerful conviction: The contentious, sound bite-driven format of cable…
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Murals on My Mind
I love giant murals painted on the vacant walls of buildings. They add so much life to the building — and the urban area all around. My favorite is the immense picture of two humpback whales on the side of the Dominion Towers parking deck in Norfolk. But the whales will have plenty of competition…
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Selling Cars to a Generation that Venerates Apple more than Chevy
Back when the Baby Boomers were coming of age a zillion years ago, the Detroit automakers had a problem: Boomers rejected their parents’ favored American brands and embraced cars from Japan and Germany. Today, automakers of all nationalities have an even bigger problem. Members of the Millennial generation are rejecting their Boomer parents’ preference for…