Author: James A. Bacon
-
Ah, the Old “Percentage of Operating Budget” Trick
by James A. Bacon Part of the University of Virginia’s fund-raising pitch to alumni and friends is to emphasize how donations help make up for cutbacks in state support for higher education. Here’s how the University of Virginia Investment Management Co. (UVIMCO) 2019 annual report frames the issue: The University of Virginia’s endowment strength also…
-
UVa Investments Top $10 Billion
The University of Virginia’s long-term investment pool has reached an all-time high of $9.6 billion, according to the University of Virginia Investment Management Company (UVIMCO). The university also maintains a $475 million short-term pool, invested in short-term Treasury bills and notes. The long-term investment pool includes the UVa endowment, the Strategic Investment Fund and other…
-
A War-on-Poverty Success Story
by James A. Bacon Homelessness in the Richmond metro area has dropped by more than half since 2007, from about 1,158 homeless people to less than 500 this year. It is one of the great anti-poverty success stories — one of the few anti-poverty success stories — of our time. This dramatic improvement results from…
-
Virginia Democrats’ Quid Pro Quo Squabble
by James A. Bacon More blue on blue: Hedge-fund manager Michael Bills, the money meister behind Clean Virginia, worked behind the scenes to oppose the elevation of Del. Eileen Filler-Corn, D-Fairfax Station, to Speaker of the House. So alleged Senate Majority Leader Richard Saslaw, D-Fairfax, in an interview on the John Fredericks radio show last…
-
Does Rural Virginia Need Mo’ Money for Schools?
by James A. Bacon Instead of getting all torqued up about becoming Second Amendment sanctuary cities, suggests a Roanoke Times editorial, citizens of rural Virginia counties should be mobilizing to demand more funding for local school systems. Arlington County spends $20,460 per student, notes the editorial. The City of Norton spends only $9,219. While the…
-
Replacing One Existential Threat with Another
by James A. Bacon I’m a big fan of Nassim Nicholas Taleb, whose thinking on such subjects as “black swan” events, “Intellectuals Yet Idiots (IYIs),” “antifragility,” and “skin in the game” I have incorporated into my commentary on this blog. So, when Taleb invokes the precautionary principle in the context of climate change, I take…
-
School Discipline Study Cuts Two Ways
by James A. Bacon There has been a long and unresolved debate over the impact of school disciplinary policies on student achievement. In recent years in Virginia the discussion has focused on the existence of a “school to prison” pipeline created by referring students with disciplinary issues to the criminal justice system. A new study…
-
Open the Sluicegates! More Free Stuff!
by James A.Bacon Virginia’s revenue forecasts for the next two years are looking rosy, and special interests are bursting with ideas on how to spend the money. First Medicaid, then K-12 education, then public four-year colleges. Now the Virginia Community College System. Governor Ralph Northam, we learn today from the Richmond Times-Dispatch, is pitching $50…
-
Rent Seeking, Runaway Higher Ed Costs, and the Middle-Class Squeeze
by James A. Bacon I don’t know what’s going to happen to Tony Maggio, a fiscal analyst with the House Appropriations Committee since 2001, when Democrats take control of the General Assembly. I wouldn’t be surprised if the new leadership finds his analysis, such as the graph above, to be highly inconvenient. That graph shows…
-
Rent Seeking, Runaway Medical Costs, and the Middle-Class Squeeze
by James A. Bacon Mirroring national trends, Virginia healthcare markets are severely out of whack. The main difference is that here in the Old Dominion, they’re even more out of whack than they are for the country as a whole. In 2018, total out-of-pocket medical insurance costs for Virginia employees (employee contribution to premiums +…
-
Virginia Likely to Impose Excessive Minimum Wage
by Hans Bader It doesn’t make sense to ban jobs that pay a living wage, just because an employer can’t afford to pay a still higher wage. But that is what a $15 minimum wage does in regions where living costs and wages are low. There are cheap regions to live in where $11 an…
-
The Rank Hypocrisy of Rural Gun Sanctuaries
by Peter Galuszka When Donald Trump ran for president on a platform of virulent xenophobia, one of the rallying cries he favored was the idea that liberal-minded localities were forming “sanctuary cities” and would not cooperate with federal immigration officials on the prowl for undocumented aliens. Right-wing Virginia politicians, notably Corey A. Stewart, who led…
-
Metro in the Age of Crazy
by James A. Bacon The chronic problems of the Washington metro system can’t be blamed entirely upon its dysfunctional, multi-state governance system or even the poor choices of its governing board. Any realistic appraisal of the Metro must take into account the fact that the country is increasingly populated by friggin’ lunatics! The Metro board…
-
Appalachia’s Job Growth Challenge
by James A. Bacon Employment growth in Virginia’s Appalachian region since 2002 has been the weakest of all five states in the Central Appalachian region, according to data contained in a recent Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) report, “Industrial Make-up of the Appalachian Region: Employment and Earnings, 2002-2017.”. Making matters worse, job growth in Central Appalachia…
-
Virginia Judges, 1; Artificial Intelligence, 0
by James A. Bacon It sounded like such a good idea: Develop a criminal-sentencing algorithm to help judges identify felons least likely to reoffend and either give them shorter jail sentences or divert them to probation or substance-abuse treatment programs. Virginia created just such an algorithm in 2001. Minimizing the subjective element in sentencing, it…