Category: Labor and Workforce
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McAuliffe: Can a Schmoozer Transform?
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in Education (K-12), Electoral process, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Government workers and pensions, Gun rights, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, LGBQT, 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, Taxes, TransportationBy Peter Galuszka On Easter Sunday, I was driving in a cold rain to Charlottesville for a family event. My cell phone started beeping with messages from Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Terry McAuliffe. He said he was on his way to his own family brunch but wanted to tap me for $5. I got similar messages…
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Kotkin Swings… He Misses.
by James A. Bacon Joel Kotkin is at it again. The urban geographer whose life mission seems to be debunking smart growth and creative-class worship, makes many well-founded observations… and manages to totally miss the point. In a column just published in The Daily Beast, Kotkin argues that the economic trend-setters of the United States…
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Don’t Get Cocky, Kid, You’re Small Potatoes
It is a truism that in today’s globally competitive economy the critical unit of economic growth and development is the metropolitan region. The industry profile and workforce characteristics of a region exert as much influence, if not more, on its prosperity than national economic policies. With that in mind, it is interesting to compare how…
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The “New” Mind of the South
By Peter Galuszka What is “the South” all about? It’s a great question about what could fairly be described the most unique, tortured and remote region of the United States. Being “Southern” requires not only a special state of mind, but a special spirit that is, by turns, as alluring as it is odious. It…
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McAuliffe Pitches Jobs vs. Ideology
By Peter Galuszka “Fantastic,” says Terry McAuliffe as he listens to officials at the Culpeper, Va., campus of Germanna Community College talk about projects ranging from designing machine controls to a weight-loss competition. The tall, curly-haired McLean businessman — a Democrat who wants to be Virginia’s next governor — walks through a campus building while…
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Sequestration and Resilience in Washington Region
Of the 3.1 million people employed in the Washington metropolitan area, 450,00 work for the federal government or military. No question, Washington stands to get hammered by sequestration and other budget cuts. But Mark Muro and Jessica Lee with the Brookings Institution argue in “Sequestration Shock: Smart D.C. Metro Will Figure It Out,” that the…
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Dissecting Obama’s “War on Coal”
By Peter Galuszka During elections a few months ago, headlines, blog sites and televisions screens were crowded with news about the “War on Coal” being waged by President Barack Obama and his EPA chief. Coal firms were laying off thousands of miners as their bottom lines took big hits. Virginia politicians including Kenneth Cuccinelli and…
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Lots of Competition for Phase 2 Rail-to-Dulles Contract
The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) has approved five construction consortia to bid on the estimated $2.8 billion Phase 2 of the Rail-to-Dulles project. According to Leesburg Today, the bidders include Bechtel Transit Partners, which is building Phase 1, and four other groups with lead players ranging from Clark Construction Group and Kiewit Infrastructure to…
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Bicycles and Economic Development
by James A. Bacon Richmond is gaining traction as a bicycle-friendly region but it is a slow and arduous process. Public and private investment in biking infrastructure remain limited, almost non-existent outside the City of Richmond. It is commonly said among cycling enthusiasts that if you build the biking amenities, the cyclists will come. The…
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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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Show Me the Money, Virginia. What You’re Doing Is Not Paying Off.
by James A. Bacon Virginians need to wake up and realize that scoring a No.1 or No. 2 ranking on Forbes Magazine‘s “Best States for Business” has very little correlation with actual economic performance. It’s a nice sobriquet but as Cuba Gooding Jr. said in the movie Jerry Maguire, “Show me the money.” When it…
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Pssst. PST Jobs are Growing in Virgina, Pass It Along.
by James A. Bacon The occupational cluster labeled “professional, scientific and technical services” (PS&T) has been one of the fastest growing job categories in the United States economy since 20o1, expanding some 15% in contrast to a roughly 20% decline in such noteworthy clusters as manufacturing, media and finance over the same period, writes Joel…
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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…