Month: February 2013
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Back on Front Burner: Controlling Carbon
By Peter Galuszka On frosty mornings, Virginia’s single largest-contribution to global warming can be seen belting out dense steam clouds from its three smokestacks near Interstate 95’s interchange with Route 288. The 1,600 megawatt Chesterfield Power Station provides owner Dominion Virginia Power with enough electricity for four million customers and represents 12 percent of all…
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An Ignorant Vote on a Good Bicycle Bill
What’s with General Assembly Republicans? They’re willing to raise taxes to fund automobile and mass-transit projects but they’re not willing to support a bill that would make bicycling safer without costing the state a dime. The House version of a bill submitted by Sen. Chap Peterson, D-Fairfax, was defeated yesterday in a tie vote in…
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Empowering College Students with Better Consumer Data
There is a big move afoot in Congress to make salary information of college graduates more readily available to the public. The idea is to give students a realistic idea of how much they can expect to earn when they apply to a school that will cost them $100,000 or up in tuition and fees.…
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More Evidence for the Decline in Automobility
by James A. Bacon NewGeography is the thinking man’s blog for people who don’t like “smart growth.” It is relentlessly skeptical of smart-growth prescriptions for urban renewal such as higher densities, mixed-use development, mass transit and the like. Its writers tend to be big fans of automobility and American suburbs. So, when a contributor to…
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Wealth-Destroying Streets
Dan Burden, executive director of the Walkable and Livable Communities Institute, looks like an aging hippie — long white hair, a broomstick of a moustache, a twinkle in his eye — and, for all I know, he is one. But his presentation Friday at the New Partners for Smarter Growth focused on wealth creation. No,…
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Smart Growth for Everyone
by James A. Bacon I’m back from the New Partners for Smart Growth conference in Kansas City, where I learned a lot, met some really bright people and, oh, by the way, gave a speech to the biggest audience of my career. As a bonus, I experienced a first — my speech was live-tweeted! You…
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Cuccinelli on Health Care Reform
by James A. Bacon In his book “The Last Line of Defense,” Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli delineates his constitutional views as the state’s top lawyer and he opines on the philosophical principles that undergird his approach to public policy. But he provides few specifics on how he, as the presumed Republican candidate for governor this…
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A Book from the Man Who Was Tea Party before There Was a Tea Party
By James A. Bacon If you’re doing opposition research on Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and you’re looking for evidence of a wild-eyed culture warrior, you’ll find thin gruel in his new book, “The Last Line of Defense,” co-written with his communications director Brian Gottstein. The book chronicles the struggle of the AG and his conservative…
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Be Careful What You Wish For . . .
By Peter Galuszka For several years, BR readers have read a steady stream of warnings about out-of-control government spending. Some of it has been sound and some shrill. The arguments tend to strike first at predictable conservative targets including entitlements and support for the poor and education. On occasion, defense spending is brought up, but…
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I’m Going to Kansas City, Kansas City Here I Come
My blogging will be light for the next few days, as I am heading to the New Partners for Smart Growth conference in Kansas City. I am flattered to participate in a plenary session in which I will get to deliver my spiel, “Smart Growth for Conservatives.” I’m stoked because this will be the largest…
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Tell Us What You Really Think, Jim
by James A. Bacon A month after getting the sack from the Commonwealth Transportation Board, James E. Rich, former Culpeper District representative, has unloaded on the $245 million Charlottesville Bypass and Transportation Secretary Sean Connaughton in far harsher terms than he did immediately after his resignation. (See “Our Way or the Highway.”) “Despite the contrary…
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Rejoice, Virginians, in the Rise of America’s Imperial City
Washington, D.C., may have been the United States capital since the earliest days of the republic, but it is only in recent years that it has emerged as one of the nation’s leading cities. The metropolitan region has ridden the growth in federal government spending, benefiting from what Aaron M. Renn in City Journal calls…
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“Jeopardy” for Budding World Statesmen
By Peter Galuszka At Richmond’s Hotel Jefferson, 10 teams of earnest-looking high school students, some in shirt sleeves, pore over notepads as they consider the questions put to them on a big screen, Jeopardy-style, in the Grand Ballroom. “What percentage of oil used by the United States actually comes from these Persian Gulf countries?” Other…
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Spending our Way to Failure
The General Assembly has advanced key elements of Governor Bob McDonnell’s incremental reform for K-12 education, including one measure that would overhaul teacher accountability and another that would provide for an A through F rating system for schools. But the legislature has shot down any bill that would challenge the status quo, such as provisions…
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Can We Have a Reality Check, Please?
In a potentially useful coincidence, the General Assembly was madly amending Governor Bob McDonnell’s transportation tax plan yesterday just as the Texas Transportation Institute prepared to release its 2012 Urban Mobility Report (UMR), the nation’s most authoritative assessment of the cost of traffic congestion. Let us hope that Virginia legislators pause from their frenetic activity…