Category: Business and Economy
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Hard Power Matters – America’s Universities Must Protect It
by James C. Sherlock This is a continuation of the discussion raised by my column on the folly of educating Chinese and Iranian visa holders in Virginia universities and colleges. Some in that discussion thought soft power would overcome what America loses in hard power. Soft power is both crucially important and utterly insufficient to…
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Why Are We Educating Citizens of Hostile Nations in Advanced Math, Science and Engineering?
by James C. Sherlock Updated Dec 16 at 1:55 PM The title poses a reasonable question. China and Iran are two of America’s greatest national security threats. Yet we continue to educate their citizens in the most security-sensitive programs of instruction at the highest levels of American higher education. Chinese and Iranian students are nearly exclusively…
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WTJU Podcast on State’s Economy
By Peter Galuszka This may be familiar turf for some readers, but here is a podcast I worked on with WTJU, the radio station of the University of Virginia. It gives a larger overview of the changes that data centers are making in the state’s economy and what that might mean in the future. This…
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Bacon Bits: Good News for a Change
More wind turbines off the Mid-Atlantic coast. Electricity from the Kitty Hawk Offshore Wind project 27 miles off the coast of Corolla, N.C., construction of which could begin as soon as 2024, will be funneled into the electric grid via a substation in Virginia Beach’s Sandbridge community. Roughly 600 jobs will be generated within the…
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Richmond’s Infamous Icon
By Peter Galuszka Since 1890, the Robert E. Lee Monument has dominated Richmond’s grand Monument Avenue and has stood as a striking protector of the state’s long history of systemic racism. True, other Confederate heroes such as Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and J.E.B. Stuart also found a memorial spot on the Avenue but Lee has always…
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Does a $9 Billion Carbon Tax Get Your Attention?
by Steve Haner The 2021 General Assembly is now six weeks away, with the holidays in between. We know no more about the coming Northam Administration proposal to impose a carbon tax and rationing scheme on our motor fuels than we did months ago. Keeping you uninformed may be part of the plan. All we…
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The Lies in “Hillbilly Elegy”
By Peter Galuszka A 2016 memoir by J.D. Vance, a former Ohio resident, drew praise from conservatives for its laud of self-reliance and disciple and criticism from others for its long string of debunked clichés about people from the Central Appalachians. The book, “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis,”…
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Behind Dominion’s Shift to Renewables
By Peter Galuszka Ever wonder why Dominion Energy found religion and announced a major shift to renewable energy? The answer is that modern, high technology businesses want it and the Richmond-based utility wants to respond to their desires. This one of the themes in this recent cover story I did for Style Weekly that explores…
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Unemployment of Blacks Exceed that of Whites at Every Level of Educational Attainment
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Here is another salvo in the culture wars that have been reflected on this blog. An article in a newspaper today begins with this sentence: “From advanced-degree holders to high-school dropouts, Black workers have substantially higher unemployment rates at every level of educational attainment than white workers….” And which woke newspaper with…
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Stewart Gets Last-Minute Gift From Trump
Peter Galuszka Corey A. Stewart, a conservative firebrand from Prince William County, is getting a last-minute going-away present from President Donald Trump. As Trump’s administration comes to an end, Trump has created a position on trade at the U.S. Commerce Department that is just for him. In 2016, Stewart headed Trump’s Virginia election campaign before…
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New Business Starts in Virginia by Jurisdiction 2019
by James C. Sherlock With the interest shown in my last post, I think it will prove interesting to this audience to see the distribution of business starts by political jurisdiction in Virginia along with some data to ponder. The preparation I have put together a spreadsheet sourced from the census bureau, and then added…
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Capitalism Transcends the Best Efforts of the Universities to Kill It
by James C. Sherlock We have chronicled here the broad and deep attacks on capitalism by the socialist and Marxist clerisy led by academics and their students in the media. The attacks are bitter and utterly relentless. There is hopeful news. PBS outlets all over the country yesterday published an article titled “The Unexpected Boom…
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Northam’s Tax Hikes Keeping Virginia Budget Afloat
This column was published originally in the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy newsletter. Steve normally re-publishes it on Bacon’s Rebellion himself, but he is volunteering at the polls today, so I am posting for him. — JAB by Steve Haner One quarter into the new fiscal year, despite the ongoing COVID-19 recession, Virginia state…
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Positive Energy in Jackson Ward
by James A. Bacon Alisha and Lamont Hawkins thought it would take 10 days to renovate their Inner City Blues barbecue restaurant in Richmond’s Church Hill neighborhood. Their effort tuned into a three-month “skirmish” with city regulators as they went up a painful learning curve. Hoping never to repeat the experience, Alisha joined the Jackson…
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Bacon Bits: Government, Race, and Poverty
Whites need not apply. The initial draft of a Loudoun County Public Schools “student equity ambassador program” barred white students from admission to the program. The selection guidelines said specifically, “This opportunity is open to all Students of Color,” reports The Virginia Star. The guideline was deleted after whistleblowers called public attention to it, but…