Author: Peter Galuszka
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Where Are the Jobs Going to Come From?
By Peter Galuszka The conservative dogma machine continues to whine on in full gear. There’s Texas Gov. Rick Perry talking about it and Mitt Romney, sort of. Our own esteemed James A. Bacon Jr. is on Norm Leahy’s right-wing radio citing it chapter and verse. What is it? The government should not be in the…
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Xu Bing’s Tobacco Show
By Peter Galuszka The history of Virginia is intertwined very tightly with that of tobacco. The Golden Leaf boosted the two colonies from their earliest days. One of the first acts of the new colonial legislature in the Old Dominion was establishing price supports for tobacco, which was used a currency and was the state’s…
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Ecologists Need Not Apply
By Peter Galuszka Stacking the deck seems to be the modus operandi of the administration of Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell. First, he annihilated nearly the entire board of the Virginia Ports Authority. And on Friday, he announced his new picks for the Virginia Coal and Energy Commission. It is a very important decision since…
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Thanks, Monsieur Warbucks!
By Peter Galuszka Sometimes there are enlightened people out there. This is point to shake up the Baconauts and Boomergeddons, but the New York Times has an editorial this morning about the enlightened rich. Following the lead of Warren Buffett, the investment Sage of Oamaha who says he should pay more taxes: “Sixteen of France’s…
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Nice Try, Cooch
By Peter Galuszka Surprise, surprise, surprise. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has tossed out a notorious challenge by Virginia Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli and arch-conservative Liberty University to Obamacare. In a surprise move, a three-judge panel at the appeals court ruled that the two plaintiffs did not have standing to bring the case and…
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Virginia Reform, Kremlin-style
By Peter Galuszka What is it about Virginia’s Republicans and secrecy? Gov. Bob McDonnell has stirred the cackles of open government advocates and Democrats by keeping private “working groups” of his Governor’s Commission on Government Reform, one of his signature programs. Meanwhile, U.S. Rep Eric Cantor, House Majority Leader and overnight budget hawk, has raised…
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The Over-Regulation Hoax
By Peter Galuszka “They’re coming out with multiple, onerous regulations,” says Mike Bucci, a small business owner in Richmond, according to a visual runby Chief Baconaut James A. Bacon Jr., as part of a blog posting titled”Paperwork, Solar Panels, and Job Creation.” Mr. Bucci complains that his small business, which comes up with business solutions,…
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The Ghost of June Allen
By Peter Galuszka The ghost of a classical piano player with a knack for penetrating huge engineering reports is watching over the latest problems at Dominion Virginia Power’s North Anna nuclear power station. Throughout the 1970s, June Allen, who headed the North Anna Environmental Coalition and died of breast cancer in 2010, fought Virginia Electric…
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Killing Virginia’s Golden Goose
By Peter Galuszka Will Virginia end up killing the goose that has laid its golden egg? With apologies to Aesop, it is the most pressing economic question the Old Dominion faces. The golden egg, of course, is the federal government whose jobs continually prop up the state work rolls and help the flow of state…
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Grumpy Old Men
By Peter Galuszka Here I was, sitting in a strip mall Panera, waiting for the next electric socket to open up. It was the aftermath of Hurricane Irene and I had been without electricity since 4:35 p.m. Saturday. I have a home office, so having no power can be deadly. Plenty of other people had…
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Vive La France!
By Peter Galuszka The French, who often come up with the sine qua non many situations, have done it again. Like the U.S., the French face a troubled economy and a bloated budget. They face credit ratings downgrades. So, the wily ones have decided to slap on an extra tax on sugary soda, alcohol and…
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All Shook Up
By Peter Galuszka Today’s earthquake near Mineral should shake up a lot of thinking. All sorts of things happened about 10 minutes to 2 p.m. The Pentagon was evacuated. Airplanes up and down the East Coast were put on ground hold. A stairwell in Richmond is said to have collapsed. As for me, I was…
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Big U.S. Firms Hide Overseas Jobs
By Peter Galuszka The immediate and critical question looming before the U.S. at the moment is how to create more jobs. It is Job One (pun intended). Without jobs, tax revenues will continue to languish. GDP will drop. The need to cut more government services will become more pressing, although cutting is something that should…
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Is the Boomergeddon Sky Really Falling?
By Peter Galuszka Here’s a little reality check. Baconauts and Boomergedons have been ecstatic, if not orgasmic, over the totally unnecessary and dangerous debt ceiling standoff in Congress and Standard & Poor’s downgrading of U.S. credit. It has been amusing to see them wash themselves in glory as they congratulate each other on their prescience. If only…
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Tax the Rich!
By Peter Galuszka One the recurring themes of James A. Bacon, the Bacon-In-Chief, and his Baconauts, is that while the vast, unwashed masses of Americans must endure cutbacks in their lifestyles and spending to prevent “Boomergeddon,” the rich are strangely left out of the equation. Keep in mind that in the past 30 years, the…