Category: Business and Economy
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The War against COVID-19: Tales from the Trenches
Small business gap funding. Northern Virginia technology entrepreneur Pete Snyder and his wife have donated $100,000 in “seed money” to create the nonprofit Virginia 30 Day Fund to help businesses meet payroll until federal relief comes through. The fund, reports the Washington Post, will provide up to $3,000 to each approved small business. recipients do…
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Right Wing Uses Virus To Stifle Needed Reforms
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in Blogs and Blog Administration, Business and Economy, Civil Rights, Individual Liberties, Consumer Protection, Culture wars, Demographics, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, General Assembly, Governance, Government Finance, Government Transparency, Gun rights, Health Care, Infrastructure, Labor and Workforce, Media, Money in politics, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Social Services and Entitlements, TaxesBy Peter Galuszka Right-wingers in Virginia have been apoplectic for months that Democrats finally captured the General Assembly after years of Republican control. They also were enraged that the legislature this winter passed a number of reforms that would draw Virginia into the 21st Century such raising the minimum wage, boosting collective bargaining, tightening rules…
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To Accelerate Economic Recovery, Delay These Laws
by Chris Braunlich Last week the Virginia Municipal League (VML), representing the Commonwealth’s city, town and county governments, urged Governor Ralph Northam to delay legislation imposing new costs and unfunded mandates on them. They argued that the economic recession and uncertainty created by the COVID-19 pandemic have made both prohibitive. The VML is right. During…
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Latest COVID-19 Job Toll: 112,000 in Virginia Last Week
by James A. Bacon The latest unemployment claims are in, and they’re brutal — more than twice the level in Virginia (and across the country) of last week, which was, by far, the worst week in the history of the United States. For the week ending March 28, the number of seasonably unadjusted initial claims…
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Is Aubrey Layne Serious about a $2B “Hit” to Virginia’s Biennial General Fund from COVID-19?
By DJ Rippert Penny Layne. Aubrey Layne is Virginia’s Secretary of Finance under the Northam Administration. Previously, Layne served as Secretary of Transportation under the McAuliffe regime. Prior to his time in government Layne held a number of executive positions in private enterprise including the presidency of Great Atlantic Properties. Layne is listed by Wikipedia…
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“We Are All Keynesians Now”
By Peter Galuszka John Maynard Keynes, the British economist, advocated government spending and monetary intervention as suitable for modern economies. When I was a student at a liberal college in New England in the early 1970s, we were taught that Keynes very much had the right idea. As evidence, we had the Great Society programs…
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Photo Project Spotlights Pipeline Impact
By Peter Galuszka Veteran photographer Karen Kasmauski, who grew up in Norfolk, has a brilliant online project that shows the human and environmental impacts of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. She is a senior fellow with the International League of Conservation Photographers, a non-profit group that funded her project that centers mostly in rural Nelson and Buckingham…
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Virginia Should Issue Immunity Certificates
Yesterday I argued that Virginia should allocate a chunk of its COVID-19 helicopter dollars from the federal government to conduct widespread testing for the presence of coronavirus antibodies. If the antibodies are present, the person presumably is immune to the sickness and should be free to re-enter society and the workforce. Turns out, the Germans…
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Is It the Death Knell For Dominion’s Pipeline?
By Peter Galuszka For more than a decade, hydraulic fracturing drilling for natural gas and oil has transformed the American energy picture, leading to big revivals in such energy fields such as Marcellus in West Virginia and Pennsylvania and the Bakken field in the Dakotas. It has prompted Dominion Energy and its utility partners to…
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Virginians Hit the Sauce
By Peter Galuszka Virginians are stocking up on spirits, fearing that the ABC store system might shut down because of the coronavirus pandemic. Last week saw sales of $30.1 million up from $4.5 million the previous week. While big, the volume has not surpassed the holiday seasons last year. For days, there have been rumors…
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Northam: Take the Bricks Off the Life Rafts
My first post in two weeks. What the heck, I should join the parade and give a bunch of advice to our beleaguered Governor which he is likely to ignore. This first appeared today in the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star. It has one of those annoying “take a survey” paywalls, but in this case asks a…
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How to Optimize the Lives/Jobs Tradeoff in the COVID-19 Epidemic
by James. B. Murray, Jr. The debate now raging over the tradeoffs between saving lives and economic disruption is clouded by oversimplification. The solutions we ultimately adopt will not be some groundless elimination of protective measures on Easter Sunday, any more than they will call for quarantining everyone, everywhere until some arbitrary date in July…
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Plan Now for COVID-19 De-Mobilization
by James A. Bacon Everyone wants to put people back to work as soon as the COVID-19 virus recedes, whether that’s month or two or three from now. In video discussion above with Dr. Alan Dow, Richmond creativity consultant Scott Wayne (at right) argues that we need to begin thinking now about how to…
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Keep Cash Flowing
by Chris Braunlich The government actions taken to flatten the coronavirus pandemic will most effect the smallest of businesses, as well as part-time and lower income workers such as restaurant wait staff, and ‘gig’ economy workers without benefits For small businesses, an SBA loan (even at discounted interest) is no substitute for customers and cash…
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COVID-19 Economic Impact Estimates
by James A. Bacon Thanks to its high share of federal government employment and a high percentage of jobs that can be performed remotely, Virginia is somewhat less vulnerable to job losses from COVID-19-related shutdowns of large sectors of the economy than other states, said Stephen Moret, CEO of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VED)…