Author: Peter Galuszka
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Herring Rises as McAuliffe Falls
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in Business and Economy, Consumer Protection, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Demographics, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Electoral process, Federal issues, Government Finance, Government workers and pensions, Health Care, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Media, Money in politics, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Social Services and EntitlementsBy Peter Galuszka Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring’s ruling that undocumented Virginians who entered the state as children can qualify for in-state college tuition is another bold and praiseworthy effort to drag the Old Dominion into the new age. His comments on gay marriage this winter foreshadowed a U.S. district judge’s decision in Norfolk that…
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A Frenchman Turns Economics Upside Down
By Peter Galuszka Call it “The Anti-Baconomics.” Thomas Piketty, a French economist, is turning conventional, conservative economic thinking on its head. Goodbye to the idea that all boats rise in capitalism. What we are seeing instead is a dangerous concentration of 21st century wealth in the hands of an ever-smaller elite. This is Piketty’s message…
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The Perils of Gas Fracking
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in Business and Economy, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Infrastructure, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, UncategorizedBy Peter Galuszka More media accounts are showing up now that 84,000 acres of lands south and east of Fredericksburg have been leased for possible hydraulic fracturing drilling for natural gas. This Sunday’s Richmond Times-Dispatch published a map showing the leased area covering big swaths of land from the Fort A.P. Hill military area east across the…
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April Is The Cruelest Month
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in Business and Economy, Consumer Protection, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Government Finance, Infrastructure, Labor and Workforce, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Water-waste waterBy Peter Galuszka April is the cruelest month, especially for brutal energy disasters. This Sunday is the fourth anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling blowout that killed 11 and caused one of the country’s worst environmental disasters. April 5 was the fourth anniversary of the Upper Big Branch coal mine explosion in West Virginia…
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Fracking the Mother of Presidents
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By Peter Galuszka Controversial hydraulic fracking appears to becoming a distinct possibility in areas south and east of Fredericksburg on land that is famed for its bucolic and watery splendors along with being the birthplaces of such historical figures as George Washington, James Monroe and Robert E. Lee. After several years of exploring and buying…
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Rethinking Online Classes at U.Va.
By Peter Galuszka Just two years after the University of Virginia weathered a crisis and the short-lived resignation of its president for supposedly not embracing online education fast enough, Mr. Jefferson’s school is taking a cautious approach about Web-based courses. This is a good thing, despite the excitement over having thousands of distant students sign…
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The Richmond Elite’s Bizarre Self Image
By Peter Galuszka If one wants to know one source of Richmond’s malaise, she or he need look no further than the pages of the Richmond Times Dispatch, the mouthpiece of the city’s elite. This is especially true when one reads this morning’s edition. The inadvertent revelations about the city and what is wrong with…
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“Where Is the Closest Tiki Bar?”
By Peter Galuszka Often times, blog commenters really hit the nail on the head. This is the case with “Virginiagal2” who responded to my blog post earlier this week that Richmond’s schools are decrepit and crumbling, as Style Weekly detailed in a recent cover story. They note that Richmond’s elite has done little for its public…
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Is Blackwater Successor in Ukraine?
By Peter Galuszka A private security company with ties to Virginia and northeastern North Carolina has been linked to rising tensions between Ukraine and Russia that some fear could turn into war. The Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement April 8 saying that a security firm named “Greystone” that is tied historically to the defunct…
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Richmond’s Huge and Hidden Problem
By Peter Galuszka There’s been plenty of image-building on this blog site in favor of what is perceived to be a “new” Richmond. In this view, the former Capital of the Confederacy famous for its gentile white elite and, unfortunately, race politics, is being transformed to a major draw for talented young people and active…
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The New West: Leaving Richmond Behind
By Peter Galuszka This story may seem a contrarian piece when it comes to smart growth and exurban sprawl but so be it. Back in 1969, road planners in Richmond came up with an idea for a superhighway, Route 288, that would span the iconic James River and connect the far western suburban areas of…
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An Inconvenient Obamacare Truth
By Peter Galuszka It is highly amusing to watch Obamacare detractors mock news that the Affordable Care Act has more than reached it goal by signing up 7.1 million Americans. This inconvenient truth turns the Fox News echo chambers on its head. You also read a bit of that on this blog – there’s an…
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Why Five Ex-Attorneys General Are So Wrong
By Peter Galuszka The practice of law in Virginia is supposed to be an honorable profession. The state, which produced such orators as Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson, loves its lawyers perhaps much more than individuals who actually create or do something of value. It could be why the state has so many of them.…
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An Ex-Coal Baron’s Strange Movie
By Peter Galuszka Almost four years after 29 miners employed by then Richmond-based Massey Energy were killed in a West Virginia mine explosion, its former chief executive under federal investigation for widespread safety violations has come forward with an apparently self-funded “documentary” proclaiming his innocence. Donald Blankenship released the film “Upper Big Branch, Never Again”…
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Ukraine Secret Ops: A Virginia Spy Story
By Peter Galuszka About 32 years ago, I was driving my dark green Audi Fox through Virginia’s lush horse country near Middleburg in search of a 350-acre farm owned by Harry Rositzke, author, educator and linguist. He also was one of the highest ranking spies in the Central Intelligence Agency which ran secret operations against…