Category: Labor and Workforce
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Our Throwaway Culture
By Peter Galuszka As the holidays approach, what happens to the gifts after you give them? Many end up in the trash. I pondered those questions in the December issue of the Chesterfield and Henrico Monthlies. It deals with a polyglot of forces including the planned obsolescence of many goods, especially electronics, global trade cycles,…
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Taking Another Whack at Virginia’s Dysfunctional Job Training System
by James A. Bacon Virginia spent $341 million in government funds in fiscal 2013 on workforce development programs. What did taxpayers get for their money? There is no way to tell, according to a new Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) report, “Virginia’s Workforce Development Programs.” Some of the main findings: No consistent accounting.…
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Big Energy’s Conspiracy with Attorneys General
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in Business and Economy, Consumer Protection, Courts and law, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, 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, Taxes, Transportation, Uncategorized, Water-waste waterBy Peter Galuszka What seems to be strong opposition to a host of initiatives by President Barack Obama and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to curtail carbon and other forms of pollution is no mere coincidence. According to a deeply reported story in Sunday’s New York Times, some state attorneys general, most of them Republicans,…
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Meet the New Plan, Same as the Old Plan
by James A. Bacon Last week Governor Terry McAuliffe published his strategic plan for economic development, which will provide a road map for legislative and executive policy for the remainder of his term. My quick-and-dirty analysis is that there’s nothing much new here — it checks all the usual boxes — but there’s nothing offensive…
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Suddenly, It’s Raining Gas Projects and Tax Breaks
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in Business and Economy, Consumer Protection, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Infrastructure, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Property rights, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, Taxes, Transportation, Uncategorized, Water-waste waterBy Peter Galuszka Suddenly it seems to be raining natural gas pipelines and snowing millions of dollars in tax breaks and incentives for rich electric utilities. Dominion Resources, the powerful and politically well-connected Richmond-based utility, apparently is getting $30 million in public money from the Virginia Tobacco Indemnification and Revitalization Commission without apparently asking for…
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The Tragedy of Unregulated Home Child Care
By Peter Galuszka Virginia’s attitudes about light regulation are coming home to roost in a most sensitive area – day care for toddlers. The point was underlined Wednesday when Chesterfield County charged Laurie F. Underwood, 46, with only a misdemeanor involving the death of one–year-old Joseph Matthew Allen who died after a fire at Underwood’s…
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Virginia’s Very Own Keystone XL
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in Business and Economy, Consumer Protection, Courts and law, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Infrastructure, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Media, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, Taxes, Transportation, Uncategorized, Water-waste waterBy Peter Galuszka The rise of natural gas keeps raising more questions about the proper future of Virginia’s and the nation’s energy policies. What just a little while ago seemed a benign source of energy has gushed into a mass of controversy and advantage. One focus of the conflict – good and bad – is the…
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Dominion’s Strange Tobacco Money
By Peter Galuszka Dominion Resources, the powerful, Richmond-based utility with $13 billion in revenues, has strangely been getting $30 million public funds to bring a natural gas pipeline to a new generating plant in Brunswick County. Odder still (or maybe not so) the public funds are coming from the GOP-controlled Virginia Tobacco Indemnification and Community…
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Bringing Big Data to the Poverty Debate
Here is a positive development in state government that will never get the attention it deserves: The Virginia Department of Social Services is joining four other state agencies in contributing data to the Virginia Longitudinal Data System (VLDS). VLDS is a system for accessing data maintained by the Virginia Department of Education, the State Council for Higher Education…
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My Drive Through Two West Virginias
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in Business and Economy, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Education (K-12), Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Infrastructure, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, Taxes, UncategorizedBy Peter Galuszka It was a biting eight degrees when I hit the road in Beckley, W.Va. last Wednesday morning having held a book signing and given a talk in Charleston the night before. I wanted to drive two hours up to Harrison County, where my family lived from 1962 to 1969, and see what…
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Fracking Our Pristine Mountain Forests
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in Business and Economy, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Infrastructure, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, Taxes, Uncategorized, Water-waste waterBy Peter Galuszka Is nothing sacred? Of all groups, the U.S. Forest Service should protect the lands it controls, but today it introduced a plan that would allow limited hydraulic fracturing for natural gas in the 1.1 million-acre George Washington National Forest which straddles Virginia and West Virginia. Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe had opposed lifting…
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Eagles Soar Over Turkeys!
By Peter Galuszka I had to swallow my bile when I read a recent post by James A. Bacon that the University of Mary Washington is not a “prestige institution with strong pricing power and a large backlog of students clamoring to get in.” The arrogance of that statement is stunning as is its underlying…
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Kudos: U.S.-China Climate Pact
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in Business and Economy, Children and Families, Consumer Protection, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Government workers and pensions, Health Care, Infrastructure, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Property rights, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Taxes, UncategorizedBy Peter Galuszka President Barack Obama’s trailblazing pact with Chinese leader Xi Jinping to limit greenhouse gas emissions through 2025 is welcome news and could do much to reduce carbon dioxide emissions since the two countries are responsible for about 40 percent of the globe’s total. China is an economic powerhouse so energy hungry it…
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Takeaways From the GOP’s Big Win
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in Business and Economy, Electoral process, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and Race Relations, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, UncategorizedBy Peter Galuszka The night of Tuesday, Nov. 4 was an ugly one for the Democrats and a big win for Republicans. Here are my takeaways from it: U.S. Sen.Mark Warner clings to a tiny lead that seems to grow slightly, still making it uncertain if opponent Ed Gillespie will ask for a recount. The…
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Steve Nash’s Important Book
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in Business and Economy, 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 Stephen Nash, a former journalist who teaches at the University of Richmond, has written an important new book about how climate change could affect Virginia. His detailed reporting is impressive and I think he shatters the arguments of global warming deniers. Here is a book review I did for Style Weekly: “Imagine…