Category: Labor and Workforce
-
Empowering College Students with Better Consumer Data
There is a big move afoot in Congress to make salary information of college graduates more readily available to the public. The idea is to give students a realistic idea of how much they can expect to earn when they apply to a school that will cost them $100,000 or up in tuition and fees.…
-
“Jeopardy” for Budding World Statesmen
By Peter Galuszka At Richmond’s Hotel Jefferson, 10 teams of earnest-looking high school students, some in shirt sleeves, pore over notepads as they consider the questions put to them on a big screen, Jeopardy-style, in the Grand Ballroom. “What percentage of oil used by the United States actually comes from these Persian Gulf countries?” Other…
-
Is Virginia Uranium Quickly Running Out of Money?
—
by
in Agriculture & forestry, Business and Economy, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Government Finance, Government workers and pensions, Health Care, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Property rights, Public safety & health, Science & TechnologyBy Peter Galuszka Just how financially viable is Virginia Uranium, which appears to be losing its battle to lift a 31-year-old ban on uranium mining in Virginia? Corporate documents filed with Canadian securities regulators state that as of last September, Virginia Energy Resources Inc., Vancouver, British Columbia-based parent of Virginia Uranium that wants to mine…
-
Patents and Regional Prosperity
by James A. Bacon Here’s more evidence that economic growth in the innovation economy will gravitate toward existing centers of technology prowess: According to a Brookings Institution report, “Patenting Prosperity: Invention and Economic Performance in the United States and its Metropolitan Areas,” 63% of all U.S. patents are developed by people living in just 20…
-
Virginia Uranium’s Strangely Short Half-Life
Peter Galuszka After years building up to a critical mass, Virginia’s uranium controversy never quite reached fission. State Sen. John Watkins, a Republican and uranium backer from Powhatan, pulled the plug on his pro-mining bill Thursday as it faced certain death at a Senate committee. There are a couple of other legislative efforts out there,…
-
The Overweening Power of Labor Unions
By Peter Galuszka Not that long ago during last year’s presidential campaign — before Bacon’s Rebellion became the mush it is now — brave conservatives were skewering Virginia’s and America’s most venomous threats and holding them high for us all to see. They were, of course, labor unions and the very unsavory thought that working…
-
The Intellectual Poverty of Richmond’s Poverty Report
by James A. Bacon An anti-poverty commission appointed by Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones has produced a schizophrenic report recommending how to address poverty in the city. On the one hand, it proffers some common-sense proposals on how to help poor Richmonders find jobs and otherwise improve their condition. On the other, it advocates anesthetizing…
-
The Wobbly World of Global Uranium Prices
—
by
in Business and Economy, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Infrastructure, Labor and Workforce, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Property rights, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Water-waste waterBy Peter Galuszka Highly controversial plans to mine and mill a rich tract of uranium in Pittsylvania County are before the General Assembly. Plenty of studies, lobbyists and scads of money are being thrown about on both sides of the argument. Yet a brief story on page B7 in today’s Wall Street Journal deals with…
-
The Rehabilitation of Helen E. Dragas
By Peter Galuszka Call it the rehabilitation of Helen E. Dragas. Dragas, the head of the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia, got into a big mess last spring when she tried and failed to oust popular university President Teresa Sullivan. After a national embarrassment, the reappointment of Dragas, a politically influential construction…
-
How Bleak Are Virginia’s Ports, Exactly?
By Peter Galuszka Is there something fishy about Gov. Robert F. McDonnell’s push to privatize the Virginia Port Authority? For months, state Transportation Secretary Sean Connaughton, privatization-minded corporate executives and some consulting firms have been beating a drum about the supposedly bad if not fatal fiscal outlook for the VPA and Virginia International Terminals, a…
-
Uranium Mining on Slate.com
—
by
in Business and Economy, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, 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 & TechnologyBy Peter Galuszka Just in time for your weekend reading, here’s a piece I did for Slate on the uranium mining controversy.
-
Here Comes Cooch-ageddon!
—
by
in Education (higher ed), 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, Transportation, Water-waste waterHard right conservative Kenneth T. Cuccinelli has a very good chance of becoming the next governor. At least that’s my view 11 months out. I disagree with Cuccinelli on almost everything and will spare my readers the list. But I do agree on one thing: he has proved to be a wily politician. He’s turned…
-
Sticking Southside With Uranium Mining
—
by
in Business and Economy, Economic development, 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, TaxesBy Peter Galuszka If you are a resident of Pittsylvania County in Virginia’s Southside, you can be happy to know that some Richmond legislators and a few citizens want to restrict uranium mining exclusively to your county. Led by Republican State Sen. John Watkins of Powhatan, the Virginia Coal and Energy Commission voted 11-2 to…
-
The New Geography of Jobs
by James A. Bacon “The New Geography of Jobs” is arguably the most important book about urban economics published in 2012. Author Enrico Moretti, an Italian-born economics professor at Berkeley, analyzes the great divergence occurring between metropolitan regions in the United States. While much of his narrative about the “innovation” sector as the key driver…
-
IG of the Day: Disability Rates in Virginia
This map, produced by the Weldon Cooper Center’s Demographics & Workforce Group, shows 2011 disability rates in Virginia’s working-age population by public use microdata area (PUMA). According to the analysis of Rebecca M. Tippett in “Working-Age Virginians with Disabilities,” working-age Virginians with a disability are (1) significantly older and more likely to be black, (2)…