Category: Demographics
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What Virginia Millennials Are Looking For
by James A. Bacon Three out of four Virginia Millennials (belonging to the 18- to 36-year-old age cohort) are largely satisfied with the quality of life in their communities. But local quality-of-life indicators often fall short of what Millennials are looking for, and many are open to moving to other parts of Virginia or even to other states.…
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Can Things Get Any Worse? How about Declining Life Expectancy for Middle-Aged Whites?
by James A. Bacon Forgive me for bragging, but if I don’t pat my own back, no one else will do it for me. The latest dismal trend highlighted in the nation’s newspapers, a rising death rate among white, middle-aged Americans, is one that I saw coming five years ago when I wrote “Boomergeddon.” (Technically, I predicted…
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Virginia’s Best Small Cities (according to WalletHub)
OK, I’ll admit it, I’m a total list junkie. That’s why I faithfully check out the latest WalletHub rankings of the best this or worst that among America’s states and cities, even knowing the methodological pitfalls of comparing any unit of government in Virginia, with its one-of-a-kind local-government organizational structure with municipalities in other states.…
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The Assimilation of Hispanics in Virginia
Source: WalletHub by James A. Bacon WalletHub strikes again, this time compiling an ingenious set of statistics to measure Hispanic assimilation in American culture. One surprising finding (surprising to me, at least) is that Virginia ranks 8th among the 50 states and Washington, D.C., in the degree to which Hispanics are assimilated, as gauged by a…
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Fresh Thinking on the End of Life
by John C. Blair, II Twenty-first century public policy debates tend to devolve into a binary argument between those who favor the choices of individuals amalgamated into a “market” versus those who favor a state intervention to add a dash of “equality” into outcomes. However, Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal touches on an issue that frustrates…
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Virginians Swear like Southerners, Gosh Darn It
In our never-ending quest to probe deeper into the political economy, sociology and cultural essence of Virginia than any other blog in the universe, we now turn our attention to an important cultural marker: curse words. Posting in the Strong Language blog, Stan Carey has published maps showing the relative incidence in the use of 18 swear words…
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Easy Come, Easy Leave
Virginia has not been one of the nation’s fastest growing states but it has consistently enjoyed a healthy net in-migration from other states. In other words, for years more people have moved into Virginia than moved out. That likely changed in 2014. According to Atlas Van Lines moving records based on nearly 77,000 interstate and cross-border…
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Alpha Natural Resources: Running Wrong
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in Business and Economy, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Health Care, Housing, Infrastructure, Insurance, 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, TaxesBy Peter Galuszka Four years ago, coal titan Alpha Natural Resources, one of Virginia’s biggest political donors, was riding high. It was spending $7.1 billion to buy Massey Energy, a renegade coal firm based in Richmond that had compiled an extraordinary record for safety and environmental violations and fines. Its management practices culminated in a…
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Renewable Energy: A Tale of Two Virginias
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By Peter Galuszka Call it a tale of two Virginias – at least when it comes to renewable energy. One is the state’s traditional political and business elite, including Dominion Resources and large manufacturers, the State Corporation Commission and others. They insist that the state must stick with big, base-loaded electricity generating plants like nuclear…
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The Ironies of Virginia's Growing Diversity
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in Business and Economy, Demographics, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Electoral process, Entrepreneurs and Innovation, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Government workers and pensions, Immigration, Infrastructure, Labor and Workforce, Media, Money in politics, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Race and Race Relations, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, UncategorizedBy Peter Galuszka Suddenly immigration is popping up as a major issue in Virginia and the nation. Virginia Beach has been dubbed a “sanctuary city” for undocumented aliens by Fox News and conservative Websites. GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump is scarfing up poll number hikes by calling Mexicans trying to enter the U.S. illegally “rapists”…
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The Ironies of Virginia’s Growing Diversity
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in Business and Economy, Demographics, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Electoral process, Entrepreneurs and Innovation, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Government workers and pensions, Immigration, Infrastructure, Labor and Workforce, Media, Money in politics, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Race and Race Relations, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, UncategorizedBy Peter Galuszka Suddenly immigration is popping up as a major issue in Virginia and the nation. Virginia Beach has been dubbed a “sanctuary city” for undocumented aliens by Fox News and conservative Websites. GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump is scarfing up poll number hikes by calling Mexicans trying to enter the U.S. illegally “rapists”…
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Why Can't Dominion Do Big Wind Projects?
By Peter Galuszka Down in the swamplands and farmlands of northeastern North Carolina, construction has begun on a huge new wind farm that will be the largest so far in the southeastern U.S. Iberdrola Renewables LLC, a Spanish firm, has begun construction on the long-awaited $600 million project with financial help from Amazon, which also…
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Why Can’t Dominion Do Big Wind Projects?
By Peter Galuszka Down in the swamplands and farmlands of northeastern North Carolina, construction has begun on a huge new wind farm that will be the largest so far in the southeastern U.S. Iberdrola Renewables LLC, a Spanish firm, has begun construction on the long-awaited $600 million project with financial help from Amazon, which also…
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Capitalism Triumphs Again!
By Peter Galuszka If there were any questions about just how capitalism has failed, one need look no farther than Wise County, where, this week, hundreds, if not thousands, of people will line up for free medical care. The event is ably noted in The Washington Post this Sunday by a young opinion writer named…
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Memories of a Klan Rally
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in Business and Economy, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Electoral process, Energy, Federal issues, Government Finance, Gun rights, Immigration, Labor and Workforce, Media, Money in politics, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Public safety & health, Race and Race Relations, Social Services and EntitlementsBy Peter Galuszka I was looking through a some old clips today and spotted this Golden Oldie that ran in the Jan. 30, 2000 edition of BusinessWeek magazine where I worked for about 15 years. Bloomberg now owns rights to it and I hope they don’t mind me re-running it. Mindful of the lofty rhetoric…