Author: James A. Bacon
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The Resurrection of Ride Sharing
by James A. Bacon The latest Base Closure and Realignment Commission (BRAC) initiative is reshuffling 22,000 jobs around the Washington metropolitan area. Thousands of those jobs are being relocated to seven facilities off Interstate 95, from the Mark Center in Alexandria to the Quantico Marine Corps base. The federal government is providing minimal funds to…
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MWAA Backtracks on PLA, Full Steam Ahead for Dulles Rail
The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) board of directors voted today to eliminate its preference for Project Labor Agreements in the bidding for Phase 2 of the Rail-to-Dulles project, clearing the way for construction of the project estimated to cost $2.7 billion. Only a negative vote by the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors can sidetrack…
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McDonnell Team Ponders 22 Public Private Partnerships
by James A. Bacon The McDonnell administration has announced a draft list of projects to be pursued by the Office of Transportation Public-Private Partnerships (OTP3). Eight projects deemed formal “candidates” for consideration range from corridor improvements along Interstate 95 to the conversion of HOV lanes into HOT lanes in Hampton Roads. Fourteen “conceptual” projects vary…
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Hardware, Software and Heartware
Dan Slone spends a lot of time thinking about how to build more prosperous, livable and sustainable communities (see previous post). His thinking integrates bodies of thought from the green movement, which is all about creating sustainable communities, and New Urbanism, where the main emphasis is creating livable places. Dan is a visionary but he’s…
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The Urban Advantage in Regenerative Cities
by James A. Bacon Daniel K. Slone is a vocal proponent of sustainable development and he believes fervently that the “great places” where people love to work and live tend to cluster in densely populated urban areas. But the McGuireWoods attorney, who has developed a globe-trotting practice working with clients in the oft-intersecting fields of…
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The Sterile Debate over High-Speed Rail
by James A. Bacon Thomas R. Frantz, CEO of the Williams Mullen law firm and board member of the Virginians for High Speed Rail, paints a picture to Times-Dispatch reporter Michael Martz of what it would be like if Virginia had good inter-city rail connections. He imagines riding The Tide light rail line from his…
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The Rot Runs Deep, My Friends
Sure, America has big problems but we’ll overcome them. Americans are resilient. We’ve always bounced back. So goes the optimists’ refrain that the country is not hurtling toward Boomergeddon. But we’re not the same people we once were, my 83-year-old mother never tires of reminding me. The country has undergone a moral metamorphosis, she says….…
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More MWAA Hijinks
Is this really a guy we want on the board of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority right now? Dennis L. Martire, a senior executive with the Laborers International Union of North America (LiUNA), has racked up $38,000 in expenses attending five conferences in 2010 and 2011. Writes the Washington Post editorial board: In May last…
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Blacks in Virginia: By the Numbers
Michele P. Claibourn with the Weldon Cooper Demographics & Workforce Group has accomplished something remarkable in her new paper, “Blacks in Virginia: Demographic Trends in Historical Context“: She has brought fresh insights and perspectives to a well-worn topic. In this chart, Claibourn shows the changing percentage of the African-American population in Virginia. During Reconstruction, the…
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Virginia’s Major Metro Economies Looking Pretty Darn Good
I’ve been ragging on my home town of Richmond in recent months, based upon Brookings Institution data, for its lagging economic performance coming out of the recession. Now comes a ranking of metropolitan areas published by Policom Corporation in which the fair city upon the James fares quite well, 35th among the nation’s 366 metropolitan…
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Ready or Not, Here Comes the Higher Ed Online Revolution
In the previous post I highlighted Robert Samuelson, who says we need to re-think who needs a college education. In this post, I draw your attention to John E. Chubb and Terry M. Moe, who argue in the Wall Street Journal that we need to re-think how we deliver college education. In particular, Chubb and…
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Quote of the Day: Robert Samuelson
“We overdid it. The obsessive faith in college has backfired. … College-for-all has been a major blunder. … The fixation on college-going, justified in the early post-war decades, stigmatizes those who don’t go to college and minimizes their needs for more vocational skills. It cheapens the value of a college degree and spawns the delusion…
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Dulles Toll Road Transfer to MWAA Perfectly Legal, the Cooch Advises
by James A. Bacon Del. Robert G. Marshall, R-Manassas, probably did not get the answers he hoped for when he asked for an advisory opinion from Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli on matters pertaining to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA). Cuccinelli has gone on record opposing the Rail-to-Dulles project administered by MWAA as a boondoggle.…
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Preface to “Smart Growth for Conservatives”
by James A. Bacon As regular readers of Bacon’s Rebellion should know by now, I am a philosophical conservative with a strong libertarian bent. I believe in smaller government, lower taxes, less regulation and stronger property rights. I regard the private sector, not the government, as the engine of economic progress. I regard social-engineering progressives…
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Smart Growth for Conservatives
Smart growth is too important to leave to liberals. Conservatives must articulate their own vision for creating prosperous, livable and fiscally sustainable communities.