Author: Peter Galuszka
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The Lessons of the 2013 General Assembly
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in Business and Economy, Consumer Protection, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Electoral process, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Government workers and pensions, Health Care, Housing, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Social Services and Entitlements, Taxes, TransportationBy Peter Galuszka If there’s any good news from the 2013 General Assembly session, it is that the hard right’s strange hold on taxation has been broken. Republicans can start acting like responsible adults once again instead of dogmatic shills or spoiled children. Gov. Robert F. Donnell and legislators found a way to raise badly…
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Peanuts, Tobacco and Corporate Greed
By Peter Galuszka Stewart Parnell had a dilemma. The owner of Lynchburg-based Peanut Corporation of America faced deadlines in shipping peanut butter from his troubled manufacturing plant in Georgia but test results from salmonella, a problem because of unsanitary conditions at the factory, were not back from the lab yet. His customers included schools, snack…
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Visa Reform and Farmville’s Private Gulag
By Peter Galuszka Surrounded by coils of security wire, the cream-colored metal complex sits in a small valley just outside Farmville, 60 miles southwest of Richmond. On the ridges above the private Immigration Centers of America-Farmville detention facility, a row of signs warns: “No photos or filming.” Inside the facility’s entry, just before the airport-style…
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Reports of King Coal’s Death Are Greatly Exaggerated
By Peter Galuszka It seems such a short time ago. In the gnarled hills of Southwest Virginia’s coalfields, prominent Republicans Ken Cuccinelli, Robert F. McDonnell and others were on the stump for Mitt Romney. The key theme was how Barack Obama’s environmental rules were putting a stranglehold over the coal industry. A little farther north…
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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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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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“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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Is Virginia Uranium Quickly Running Out of Money?
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in Agriculture & forestry, Business and Economy, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Government Finance, Government workers and pensions, Health Care, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Property rights, Public safety & health, Science & TechnologyBy Peter Galuszka Just how financially viable is Virginia Uranium, which appears to be losing its battle to lift a 31-year-old ban on uranium mining in Virginia? Corporate documents filed with Canadian securities regulators state that as of last September, Virginia Energy Resources Inc., Vancouver, British Columbia-based parent of Virginia Uranium that wants to mine…
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Judge Carrico and Southern Mythology
By Peter Galuszka One of the infuriating things about Virginia is that one can never get away from its tendency to spin myths and construct a separate universe especially when it comes to what actually happened in its history. A case in point is the coverage of the death of 96-year-old Harry Lee Carrico, the…
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Virginia Uranium’s Strangely Short Half-Life
Peter Galuszka After years building up to a critical mass, Virginia’s uranium controversy never quite reached fission. State Sen. John Watkins, a Republican and uranium backer from Powhatan, pulled the plug on his pro-mining bill Thursday as it faced certain death at a Senate committee. There are a couple of other legislative efforts out there,…
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Who’s Really Behind These Capitol Coups?
By Peter Galuszka Coup II seems well underway among Virginia’s Republican legislators. According to The Washington Post, state-level Republicans in the Old Dominion and several other states including Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania are trying to redistrict voting more along the boundaries of federal congressional districts that typically are more heavily lopsided to one party or…
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The Overweening Power of Labor Unions
By Peter Galuszka Not that long ago during last year’s presidential campaign — before Bacon’s Rebellion became the mush it is now — brave conservatives were skewering Virginia’s and America’s most venomous threats and holding them high for us all to see. They were, of course, labor unions and the very unsavory thought that working…
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The Virginia GOP’s Destructive Palace Coups
By Peter Galuszka Just how out of control are Virginia’s Republicans? This week’s redistricting coup attempt staged by prominent Republicans John Watkins and his cohort Thomas K. Norment in the otherwise evenly divided state Senate is as cynical as it is destructive. On Monday, the pair took advantage of the absence of a key Democratic…
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Is Virginia a Leader in Gun Control?
By Peter Galuszka For all of the sound and fury over guns in Virginia — panicked shooters are draining firearms shops of ammunition — the Old Dominion actually has been a leader among states on the gun control issue on a couple of fronts. For details, see my story in this week’s Style Weekly. First,…
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The Wobbly World of Global Uranium Prices
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in Business and Economy, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Infrastructure, Labor and Workforce, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Property rights, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Water-waste waterBy Peter Galuszka Highly controversial plans to mine and mill a rich tract of uranium in Pittsylvania County are before the General Assembly. Plenty of studies, lobbyists and scads of money are being thrown about on both sides of the argument. Yet a brief story on page B7 in today’s Wall Street Journal deals with…