Month: February 2013
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And the Knucklehead Award Goes to…
by James A. Bacon In the spirit of Don Rippert’s “Clownie” awards, I bequeath the Three Stooges Knucklehead award to the authors of the $100 levy on alternative-energy vehicles, a category that encompasses hybrids. I’m not sure who came up with the idea, but Gov. Bob McDonnell pushed it, and majorities in the House and…
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Virginia Students Do It Faster
No one has accused me of cutting Virginia’s institutions of higher education any slack, but I do give credit where credit is due. And now is such a time: Our public universities do a superior job of making sure not only that students graduate, but graduate within reasonably quickly. According to a new report by…
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Haven’t We Seen this Show Before?
Item One, from WSJ article, “Bernanke Affirms Bond Buying” (my emphasis): “Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke came down firmly in favor of continuing the central bank’s bond-buying programs, even as he acknowledged concerns that the efforts might encourage risk-taking that could someday destabilize markets or the economy.” Item Two, from WSJ article, “Builders Fuel Home…
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Cuccinelli’s Strange Lesson in Federalism
By Peter Galuszka (Note: You’ve heard from Jim and Les on Ken Cuccinelli’s book. Here’s my review that runs in this week’s Style Weekly). Kenneth Cuccinelli, Virginia’s firebrand attorney general and Republican gubernatorial hopeful, is typically full of fire and vinegar that make him such a lively politician. But you’d never know it from his…
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Your Clown Show at Work
The General Assembly’s transportation-tax compromise may have a problem even bigger than the fact that it raises taxes to build a transportation system for the 20th (not the 21st) century: It may be unconstitutional. Paul Goldman, former chairman of the Democratic Party of Virginia, and Norm Leahy, conservative pundit and editor of BearingDrift.com, have joined…
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Fragility, Antifragility and Virginia
by James A. Bacon Nassim Nicholas Taleb invoked the phrase “black swan” in a book by the same name to describe rare, hard-to-predict and highly disruptive events. The near-collapse of the U.S. banking system, which had been unforeseen by banks, regulators, politicians, economists and almost everyone (save a handful, like Taleb himself), is a classic…
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In Praise of Inmate Savings Accounts
And now, a short break from transportation taxes… I’ve been blogging recently about what Virginia can do to ease the reentry of jail and prison inmates into society, both salvaging lives and saving taxpayer dollars by reducing recidivism. Lisa Kinny, director of communications for the Virginia Department of Corrections, has informed me of a recent…
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The Lessons of the 2013 General Assembly
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in Business and Economy, Consumer Protection, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Electoral process, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Government workers and pensions, Health Care, Housing, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Social Services and Entitlements, Taxes, TransportationBy Peter Galuszka If there’s any good news from the 2013 General Assembly session, it is that the hard right’s strange hold on taxation has been broken. Republicans can start acting like responsible adults once again instead of dogmatic shills or spoiled children. Gov. Robert F. Donnell and legislators found a way to raise badly…
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A Dismaying Turn of Events
Wow, the General Assembly agreed Saturday to expand the Medicaid program and debauch transportation funding in a grand compromise agreement. Politics and statism triumphed. Free-market principles and liberty lost. All in a state with a Republican governor, a Republican House of Delegates and a Senate split between Rs and Ds. Does the Republican brand mean…
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What Will We Get for that Transportation Tax Increase?
by James A. Bacon So much nonsense, so little time… Let us now take a close look at Governor Bob McDonnell’s argument that Virginia needs to raise tax revenues so we can construct new transportation projects… so we can ameliorate horrendous congestion costs that are costing Virginians billions of dollars per year. Here’s what the…
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The Crumbling Argument about Crumbling Highways
by James A. Bacon As legislators fret about how to resolve the transportation funding dilemma — the latest wrinkle is that Democrats are threatening to withhold their support for increasing transportation taxes unless Governor Bob McDonnell caves on Medicaid expansion — they would be well advised to consult a new Reason Foundation report, “Are Highways…
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Peanuts, Tobacco and Corporate Greed
By Peter Galuszka Stewart Parnell had a dilemma. The owner of Lynchburg-based Peanut Corporation of America faced deadlines in shipping peanut butter from his troubled manufacturing plant in Georgia but test results from salmonella, a problem because of unsanitary conditions at the factory, were not back from the lab yet. His customers included schools, snack…
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The Smart (Growth) Crowd Weighs In
My smart growth buddies have issued a critique of the compromise transportation-funding deal. Among the highlights in the press release issued jointly today by the Coalition for Smarter Growth and the Piedmont Environmental Council: Cutting gas taxes by up to one-third reduces the tie between transportation use and funding. “Transportation, unlike our schools, is like…
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Cuccinelli Withhholds Judgment on Transportation Package
Guess which member of the Republican Party establishment is not yet jumping on board the legislative compromise crafted to restructure Virginia’s transformation funding mix… Ken Cuccinelli, attorney general and presumed Republican candidate for governor. While applauding Governor Bob McDonnell and the General Assembly for taking action to address Virginia’s serious transportation issues, Cuccinelli did not…
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A Pernicious New Doctrine
by James A. Bacon Governor Bob McDonnell may be a Republican, and he may deem himself a conservative, but he has single-handedly accomplished what two previous Democratic governors never did, and that is expand the scope of government in a way never before contemplated in Virginia. His contribution to the philosophical pollution of governance is…