Year: 2012
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Lawmakers with Nothing Better to Do
How’s this for inane micro-management of the education system? Sen. Dave Marsden, D-Burke, submitted a bill requiring all textbooks approved by the Board of Education, when referring to the Sea of Japan, to note that the body of water is also referred to as the East Sea. Only Marsden knows what prompted this exercise in geographical correctness,…
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Devolve Federal Transportation Spending to the States
Worth reading: an op-ed penned by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-SC, in the Wall Street Journal today. He explains how Senate Democrats and House Republicans have “surrendered to the status quo” of unsustainable fiscal policy by cranking up transportation spending and bailing out the Highway Trust Fund with borrowed money. DeMint makes a modest proposition: “We…
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The Road to Wealth Destruction
The soon-to-be-built Charlottesville Bypass provides a lousy economic return on investment. Only government would spend $244 million on a project that yields less than $8 million a year in benefits to the public.
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An Economy Built to Crash
by James A. Bacon President Obama has a catchy new slogan. He wants a budget that will create an economy “built to last,” evoking the best-selling book of the same name that explored the secrets of exceptional, long-lasting corporations. Unfortunately, Obama’s budget, if ever enacted, would more likely create an economy that’s “built to crash.” In essence,…
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Fraud a Minor Factor in Virginia Medicaid Spending
A piece of good news on the government efficiency front: Medicaid fraud by recipients and providers cost the General Fun only $6.1 million in Fiscal 2009, according to a report published by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC). The less-than-g0od news is that payments to individuals improperly enrolled in Medicaid amounted to beween…
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Shiny New Toy for Data Wonks
Thanks to Virginia’s new longitudinal database, we can track the number of students graduating from Virginia high schools who proceed to higher education. A simple search on the Virginia Department of Education (DOE) website informs us that 62% of all students in the 2010-2011 cohort of high school grads enrolled in a two-year or four-year…
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Citizens Asking Questions the Media Won’t
Writing in the Herndon Patch, Bob Bruhns has dug into the cost estimates for Phase 2 of the Rail-to-Dulles project and raises some interesting questions. Why, for example will it cost $235 million to build five parking decks containing 8,900 parking spaces, an average of $26,000 per space? That’s nearly twice the national average cost…
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Inside the Higher Ed Bubble
by James A. Bacon In their book, “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses,” Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa (a University of Virginia sociology professor) documented that large numbers of students were going to college “while experiencing few academic demands, investing limited effort in their academic endeavors and showing disturbingly low gains in academic performance…
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Get Your Paternity Questions Answered Now!
by James A. Bacon I don’t know whether to laugh or weep. I recently heard a radio ad for Identigene, a home paternity testing kit. Apparently, not only are more women bearing children out of wedlock than ever before, they’re so friggin’ promiscuous they don’t even know who the father is! Hey, I came of…
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More Questions about the U.S. 460 Upgrade
One more tale from the Virginia Bloggers Day event: I asked about the McDonnell/Bolling administration’s plans to build a super-U.S. 460 highway between Petersburg and Suffolk, a project that encompasses $1 billion or so in toll financing, a $500 million commitment of state transportation funds, $5 million a year in Port of Virginia funds far…
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Virginia’s Job-Creation Machine Still Under-Performing
As I alluded to in the previous post, Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling’s staff handed out a “Jobs Report” to the delegation of bloggers attending the 5th annual Bloggers Day conference in Richmond two days ago. As one would expect from any politician, that report puts the sunniest possible spin on Virginia’s economic performance during the…
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Punting on Obamacare
By Peter Galuszka The Virginia General Assembly is taking a powder on Obamacare. Faced with a federal mandate of next January to show they are making progress, Richmond legislators have dilly-dallied past the problem, many apparently fearful that too much action on setting up state-run exchanges for people to shop for health insurance will bring…
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Bolling Defends Incentives for Job Creation
Governor Bob McDonnell, like governors before him, issues a statement touting jobs created and capital invested every time the Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VEDP) is involved in a corporate investment project. The closing paragraph of seemingly every press release notes that the deal was cemented by a contribution from the governor’s “opportunity” fund or some…
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The Next Bubble: College Loans?
So, how’s that idea of loading up college kids on student debt working out? Let’s put it this way: The National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys has been moved to publish a report entitled, “The Student Loan ‘Debt Bomb’: America’s Next Mortgage-Style Economic Crisis?” Annual student borrowing crossed the $100 billion threshold for the first…
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The Cooch’s Personal Cops?
By Peter Galuszka Virginia’s zany attorney general wants to create his own armed, flying squad of crime-busters. In what could be a 21st century version of “Dragnet,” Kenneth Cuccinelli wants to create his own police force. He wants to arm 40 of the 83 members of his Medicaid fraud investigative arm. They’d have badges, too. Cuccinelli…