Category: Economic development
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COVID-19’s Long-Term Changes in Virginia
by DJ Rippert In the long run… Over the past eight months COVID-19 has dramatically impacted the world, the United States and Virginia. One hundred and twenty thousand cases of COVID-19 have been reported in Virginia Over 2,500 people have died from COVID-19 . The cases, hospitalizations and deaths continue to grow in the Old…
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Virginia’s Return on Investment in Corps of Engineers Civil Works Projects
by James C. Sherlock In response to my suggestion to use the Corps of Engineers to assess Virginia’s needs for hurricane and flood control, libertarian commenters on this blog used the argument that only oceanfront landowners will benefit. That shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how the process works. I ran into that same level of…
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Elmer Gantry In Lynchburg
By Peter Galuszka The resignation of Jerry Falwell Jr. amid a series of scandals may have a strong impact in Virginia where his late father built an extraordinary, ultra-conservative evangelical university in Lynchburg that later became highly politicized lightning rod supporting President Donald Trump. Falwell has been caught up in a number of controversies including…
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Is There a Government Role for Rural Development?
by James A. Bacon John Accordino, a planning professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, has been giving extensive thought to a perennial problem, the nation’s urban-rural divide. As author of a newly published article and State and Local Government Review, he provides a broad overview of his thinking in a Richmond Times-Dispatch column. Accordino sees the…
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Good Schools as Rural Development Magnets
by James A. Bacon An enduring question in Virginia’s economic development community is how to revitalize the state’s rural counties. Traditional rural industries such as farming, mining, timbering, and light manufacturing are shrinking. Young people are leaving to seek better career opportunities elsewhere, and few people are moving in to replace them. A contracting workforce…
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Will COVID-19 Spark a U.S. Manufacturing Renaissance?
by James A. Bacon Will the COVID-19 epidemic inspire the “re-shoring” of manufacturing to the United States and a revitalization of the U.S. manufacturing economy? If so, that could be great news for Virginia communities bet on manufacturing as a source of economic development. The story is not a simple one. Several commentators in the…
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What Needs To Be Done After the ACP
By Peter Galuszka For six long years, Dominion Energy and its partners in the $8 billion Atlantic Coast Pipeline have waged war against Virginians as they have pushed their way forward with the 600-mile-long natural gas project. Their strong-armed methods have created untold misery and expense for land-owners, members of lower income minority communities, nature…
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Common Sense and Coronavirus in Virginia
by DJ Rippert Stepping back. Over the past five months there has been an unending flood of information, guesses, misinformation and politicized ramblings about COVID-19. Various factions put forth their experts and cherry picked data to support their agendas. It’s time to step back and synthesize all that has been written into a set of…
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More Big, Honking Data Centers Coming to Virginia
The COVID-19 epidemic may be slowing the national economy, but it is accelerating the trend toward a digitized and virtual economy. That requires more data centers, and Virginia is still a key locus of the data-center universe. Amazon Web Services is proposing to build 1.75 million-square-feet of data center space in Loudoun County, reports the…
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Thank Europe For a Badly Needed Reality Check
By Peter Galuszka It’s time for a pandemic reality check, especially at Bacon’s Rebellion. The blog is flooded with post after post about how the coronavirus crisis is exaggerated and how Gov. Ralph Northam “King Ralph” is Public Enemy No. 1 and wields improper power by closing schools, bars, beaches, businesses and so on. I…
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Amidst Recession, Some Companies Are Still Investing
by James A. Bacon Tired of reading about COVID-19 and the culture wars? I’m sure tired of writing about them. For a change of pace, let’s focus on something positive. While the coronavirus-related shutdown continues to depress employment in Virginia — and crowd out good economic news — Virginia has landed a slew of economic…
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Housing Grants Just a COVID Relief Rounding Error
By Steve Haner Will $50 million be enough? Will that get all the Virginians who have fallen behind due to COVID-19 square on their rent or mortgage payments? Or is that amount, in a relief program now fleshed out by the Northam Administration, merely a start? There is a hint on the program’s web page,…
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The ACP Wins One But The War Drags On
By Peter Galuszka The $8.5 billion Atlantic Coast Pipeline has won a significant legal victory but the war is far from over. The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision, has ruled in favor of project operated by Dominion Energy and Duke Energy saying that its 42-inch pipeline can cross under the Appalachian Trail in…
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Our Gutsy Governor
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in Bacon and Pigs, Blogs and Blog Administration, Business and Economy, Civil Rights, Individual Liberties, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Culture wars, Defense, National Security, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Efficiency in Government, Elections, General Assembly, Governance, Government Transparency, Government workers and pensions, Gun rights, Media, Politics, Race and Race Relations, Regulations, Gov’t OversightBy Peter Galuszka On June 24, 2015, Nikki Haley, a Republican who was South Carolina’s first non-white governor, called for the removal of a Confederate flag that had been flying over the state’s capitol grounds for years. “This flag, while an integral part of our past, does not represent the future of our great state,”…
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The Real Danger with ANTIFA
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in Bacon and Pigs, Business and Economy, Civil Rights, Individual Liberties, Corruption and Scandals, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Culture wars, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Electoral process, Federal issues, Government Transparency, Gun rights, Immigration, Labor and Workforce, LGBQT, Libertarians, Media, Money in politics, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Race and Race Relations, Regulations, Gov’t OversightBy Peter Galuszka Get ready. The names of all kinds of leftist organizations are going to be kicked around as the masterminds behind violent, cop-beating looters, especially the so-called ANTIFA movement in Virginia and across the country.. But what is reality? I don’t have clear answers but I have some ideas to share since I…