Author: James A. Bacon
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Good Amtrak, Bad Amtrak.
Passenger rail in the United States is experiencing a renaissance, maintain the authors of a new Brookings Institution report. Amtrak ridership has increased 55% since 1997, faster than other major travel modes. The secret, the authors contend, is Amtrak’s collaboration with states to upgrade tracks, operate routes and redevelop stations. Hmmm… The report downplays the…
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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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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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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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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…
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Legislators Cobble together Transportation Funding Compromise
House and Senate negotiators agreed upon a transportation funding package that will raise $860 million a year for roads, bridges, rail and mass transit when fully implemented. Governor Bob McDonnell hailed the agreement, implying that he would sign the legislation if approved by the both legislative bodies. The package includes the following key elements: Elimination…
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Virtuous Virginia?
In my never-ending quest for insight into social and economic differences between Virginia and other states, I stumbled across an unusually revealing data set. Blogger Jon Millward analyzed a database of 10,000 porn stars to build a profile of sex actors on a range of attributes from ethnicity to cup size. Among the data points…