Category: Business and Economy
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Meatless food and the future of Virginia agriculture
By DJ Rippert Chow time. Agriculture is Virginia’s largest private industry. No other private industry is even close. The Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS) claims that agriculture has an economic impact of $70 billion annually and provides more than 334,000 jobs in the Commonwealth. Virginia’s top agricultural products and their cash receipts…
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Virginia Brewer Takes Shot at Dan Snyder with New IPA
By Don Rippert Ear flick. Given the emotions of the recent election I thought a little levity might be in order. Harpers Ferry Brewing of Hillsboro, Va., is introducing a new IPA. It will be called “Sell the Team” in a relatively transparent shot at Redskins’ owner Dan Snyder. The beer went on sale yesterday…
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WaPo Newsroom as Cesspit of Racism and Sexism?
by James A. Bacon The Washington Post Guild has issued a report charging that the Post, the largest-circulation newspaper serving the Virginia market, pays women less than men, and whites more than minorities. The pattern applies not only to the business side of the newspaper but to the social-justice crusading newsroom. Indeed, the discrepancies are…
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Want to Help Workers Work? Keep Virginia’s Right-to-Work Law
by Chris Braunlich Are a majority of Democratic candidates for the Virginia General Assembly “anti-worker?” Based on their response to a Virginia Chamber of Commerce survey, it would seem that way. General Assembly candidates were surveyed on whether they would support Virginia’s Right To Work (RTW) laws. Republicans were unanimously supportive. Democrats were almost equally…
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W&M Grad Students Plead for More Gruel
Working graduate students at the College of William & Mary are launching a campaign to demand better treatment, pay and benefits, reports WY Daily. The grad students want health, vision, and dental insurance paid as part of their yearly compensation and benefits, says Jasper Conner, a spokesman for the William & Mary Workers Union. “The…
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Virginia May Repeal Right-to-Work Law
by Hans Bader Twenty-seven states have “right-to-work” laws. These laws protect workers against being forced to join a union and against being forced to pay dues or fees to a union as a condition of employment. But right-to-work laws may soon be repealed — starting in Virginia, which passed one of the earliest right-to-work laws,…
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Demolishing Oxfam’s Laughable Ranking
by Chris Saxman Some things just have to be challenged at the outset before they gain traction and become an untrue reality. Gaining traction among too many candidates for the General Assembly is a ranking, released by a British organization, Oxfam, that graded American states and the District of Columbia on best states for workers.…
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Virginia as New Jersey: Dem Support Grows to Repeal Right-to-Work
by James A. Bacon Democrats may or may not be poised to take control of the Virginia General Assembly. Steve Haner, who knows infinitely more about Virginia politics than I do, thinks Republicans have a shot at retaining their majorities. But from my untutored perspective, all signs point to a big Democratic win this fall.…
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Bacon Bits: Cloudy Day Edition
Neo-Nazies on the loose. I’ve been highly critical of Attorney General Mark Herring for spinning state crime statistics to imply that there has been a surge in white supremacist hate crimes in Virginia. But that’s not to say there aren’t hateful white supremacists residing in the the state. The Daily Beast describes how an FBI…
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Why Are So Many Rural Virginians Stuck in Place?
by James A. Bacon A recurring question on this blog and elsewhere is why don’t more Americans (and rural Virginians) move to areas of greater economic opportunity? Why do they remain stuck in communities with high unemployment and low wages? Americans have always moved to economic opportunity in the past. What’s different now? Those questions…
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Block.one Chooses Arlington for U.S. Headquarters
This may be the most fascinating Virginia business story of the year. Block.one, a leader in blockchain technology that originated in Blacksburg but is headquartered in Hong Kong, has announced that it will establish its U.S. headquarters in Arlington County. Virginia is providing a $600,000 grant from the Commonwealth Opportunity Fund to snag the $10…
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Richmond’s World of Secrecy and Collusion
by Peter Galuszka There’s long been the “Virginia Way” of ruling oligarchs making decisions in backrooms while leaving the public out of the picture. But then there’s also the “Richmond Way,” which is the same thing on steroids. The key focus today is the so-called Navy Hill District Corporation, a group headed by Dominion Energy…
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Rapid Workforce Deployment: Selling Speed
by James A. Bacon When Stephen Moret was hired to run the Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VEDP) two-and-a-half years ago, one of his main selling points was his accomplishment of creating Lousiana’s FastStart workforce solutions program and building it into the top-ranked workforce development program in the country. Now Moret is assembling a team to…
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Philip Morris: Between a Rock and a Hard Place
by Peter Galuszka It’s been a very long goodbye. Faced with billions of dollars in health-related lawsuits and huge public relations problems in 2008, cigarette giant Philip Morris split itself in two very different companies. It reminds me of the scene in Stanley Kubrick’s brilliantly sarcastic war move, “Full Metal Jacket.” A colonel stops Private…
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Rankings Spam
by Chris Saxman There are a LOT of rankings and polls coming out these days. Some are credible, others less so. Recently, a ranking was released by Oxfam that graded the states and the District of Columbia. This is the second year of their ranking. Here’s what their release stated: In 2018, workers are not sharing…