Year: 2012
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Lingamfelter’s Land Mine
by James A. Bacon Whoah, dude! There was a lot more in Gov. Bob McDonnell’s Round 2 package of transportation legislation than his Friday press release summary let on. In my haste to knock out a quick story late in the day, I focused on the garnish on the bill — the proposed grant of…
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Everything Tastes Better with Bacon
While I labor ingloriously to ignite a second Bacon’s Rebellion here in Virginia, a Bacon Revolution has taken the United States by storm. The United States has developed a craving for bacon that cannot be satiated. We now have bacon ice cream, bacon-infused whiskey, bacon soap and, my personal favorite, served at a birthday party…
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Illinois as Italy
Over at DollarCollapse.com John Rubino asks, “Why Isn’t Illinois a Bigger Story than Greece?” Describing the Land of Lincoln as a “failed state” with $8.5 billion in unpaid bills, $27 billion in outstanding bonds and $80 billion in unpaid pension liabilities, he writes: For investors it’s a clear sign that some sort of default is…
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Name that Tunnel!
And the hits just keep on coming… Gov. Bob McDonnell has announced an addendum to the 2012 transportation legislation he is seeking this year. My favorite measure is this: Authorizing the Commonwealth Transportation Board to sell naming rights for transportation infrastructure! According to the governor’s press release, the legislation will allow private entities to place…
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Why the Opposition to Emergency MWAA Bill?
by James A. Bacon There’s been a fascinating new development in the politics of the Rail-to-Dulles project, and I frankly don’t know what to make of it. I’ll provide the background. Perhaps readers can fill in the blanks. Governor Bob McDonnell issued a press release yesterday blasting Democrats in the House of Delegates for blocking…
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IG of the Day: Has Virginia Lost Its Mojo?
Virginians engage in a lot of mutual back slapping. Yes, Republicans and Democrats agree, we’ve got one heckuva business climate. Thanks to our bipartisan, pro-business consensus, we’ve ranked No. 1 or No. 2 in the country practically since the dawn of time. Yessiree, we really are awesome. Indeed, it’s a beautiful thing to be ranked…
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Good Move on Uranium
By Peter Galuszka Gov. Robert F. McDonnell has punted on the uranium controversy and that’s a good thing, assuming the General Assembly doesn’t lift the mining ban anyway. There are simply too many unknowns about mining the tract owned by Virginia Uranium near Chatham and the state has no knowledge or regulations about mining the…
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Chesapeake Taps Infrastructure Bank for New Bridge
by James A. Bacon The McDonnell administration has closed its first major transportation-funding deal with the newly created Virginia Transportation Infrastructure Bank (VTIB): a $412 million bridge-building project in Chesapeake. The mission of the VTIB is to back important transportation projects that could not get financing otherwise. The Dominion Boulevard project will replace an old,…
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A Modest Proposal to Reform Tax Expenditures
Del. David Englin, D-Alexandria, has submitted a bill that would require any new legislation establishing or increasing tax loopholes (credits, exemptions, deductions, etc.) to expire within five years. Tax expenditures, as I have long argued, are out of control at both the federal and state level. Englin’s bill represents a modest step to reining in…
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Victimhood Has Its Privileges
To Obama Justice, only underdogs of history are worthy of equal protection by James A. Bacon The U.S. Justice Department is ever-vigilant against signs of “voter suppression” these days, most recently blocking – on the grounds that it would hurt blacks – a South Carolina law that would require voter identification. But the voting rights…
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What Happens to Rail When the Money Runs Out?
by James A. Bacon Good news from the Governor’s office: Amtrak will commence its Norfolk service by December 31, 2012 — 10 months earlier than expected! A round-trip train will bring intercity passenger rail to the city for the first time since 1977, linking Hampton Roads to Richmond, Washington, D.C., and the northeastern corridor!! “The…
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VDOT Evolves New Project-Management Focus
by James A. Bacon In 2004, the Virginia Department of Transportation maintained a staff of 10,000 employees. Today the head count stands around 7,000. That sounds like a dramatic downsizing. But there’s less to those numbers — and more — than meets the eye. Much of the staff reduction reflects an outsourcing of the design…
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Malodorous Portsmouth
By Peter Galuszka Is there something stinky going on in Portsmouth? It’s a question that has suddenly wafted up when residents of the port city learned that the Virginia Ports Authority has been in secret talks with Canadian-owned PCS Phosphate to put in a plant to melt sulfur pellets for fertilizer production. The same project…
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CBO Opines on Pros and Cons of P3s
by James A. Bacon Public-private partnerships have advantages and disadvantages as a strategy for building and maintaining the nation’s roads and highways, concludes a recently published Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report, “Using Public-Private Partnerships to Carry Out Highway Projects.” The CBO found tentatively that partnerships have built highways “slightly less expensively and slightly more quickly”…
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Good and Bad Capitalism
By Peter Galuszka The Republican presidential primary season has taken on a peculiar wackiness, particularly when free market advocate Next Gingrich takes on front-runner Mitt Romney for his days as a private equity capitalist at Bain Capital. The conservatives amongst us shudder at the very idea that something as precious as finance can be spotlighted (as…