Category: Social Services and Entitlements
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The Cooch’s Freak Show Dream Team
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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, Gun rights, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, Insurance, 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 & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, Taxes, TransportationBy Peter Galuszka Ken Cuccinelli just can’t keep away from the bizarre, but perhaps that’s what makes him what he is. He stages a convention instead of a primary to neuter Bill Bolling. And since a convention is smaller, it draws more GOP hard-righters than June bugs on a humid night and they succeed in…
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Data Shows Hospital Billing Outrages
By Peter Galuszka It’s long been fascinating how Big Hospitals, linked with Medicare, Big Pharma and Big Managed Care, have come up with an extraordinarily convoluted system of setting prices for various hospital procedures. There is plenty of nonsense about including on this blog about bringing “free market efficiencies” to health care, as if human…
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Do Racial Set-Aside Programs Create Opportunities for Blacks? It Appears They Do.
Government set-aside programs for minorities have had a positive impact on the rate of business formation by African-Americans, conclude the authors of a new study, “Impact of City Contracting Set-Asides on Black Self-Employment and Employment,” published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Write the authors: “Black business ownership rates increased significantly after program initiation,…
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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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Re-engineering Criminal Justice in Richmond
by James A. Bacon The average cost for housing an inmate in Virginia’s jails and prisons runs roughly $25,000 a year. Add to that the fact that some jails are antiquated, overcrowded and need replacing. The Richmond City Jail, for instance, designed in the 1960s to hold 856 inmates, is routinely crammed with a number…
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The Dish on Mission Investing
by James A. Bacon For many years, Richmond’s Cabell Foundation conducted business much as it had since its formation in 1957. Investing the endowment for income, the board took out 5% per year to distribute in grants to worthy causes. In 2011, that amounted to roughly $4.3 million directly for some two to three dozen…
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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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A Partial Explanation for Spreading Food Insecurity
by James A. Bacon Food insecurity is increasing in Virginia. Don’t take my word for it — that’s what the people at Feedmore, which runs Central Virginia’s food bank, tell me. The food bank operation, founded in 1980 to provide emergency food relief to poor Virginians, now addresses a chronic need. The organization has evolved…
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McDonnell Lays Out Principles for Medicaid Reform
by James A. Bacon Predictably, Governor Bob McDonnell is taking flak for refusing to agree to an expansion of Virginia’s Medicaid program without significant assurances and concessions from the Obama administration. What I haven’t seen yet is a critique of his reasons for doing so. Name calling and disparaging motives doesn’t count. In a letter…
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Calvinists, Libertines and the Medicaid Debate
by James A. Bacon So, we learn from Peter G. in the previous post that conservatives who oppose the willy-nilly expansion of Medicaid in Virginia are either preppies who dress like they just walked off the plantation after giving the darkies a good hard whipping or are hard-right cheapskates with a Calvinist bent. This is…
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“I Got Mine from Mah Daddy!”
By Peter Galuszka One of the stranger attributes of Virginia’s conservatives is their cheesy, Calvinist streak. Their world view tends to celebrate the rich and powerful, regardless of whether the individual worked diligently and creatively to generate the wealth or if it was inherited. For example, one man (not a Virginian) whom I respect described…
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Fostering Regional Collaboration Case by Case
by James A. Bacon For reasons rooted in local identity and entrenched political interest, Virginians are unlikely to consolidate their local governments into units aligned with the metropolitan regions they serve. But it is not impossible to imagine governments partnering regionally on specific projects. A new study by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission,…
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IG of the Day: Disability Prevalence by State
From “Disability Characteristics of Income-Based Government Assistance Recipients in the United States: 2011,” published by the U.S. Census. Nationally, 30.4% of all adult Americans receiving social assistance of one kind of another are classified as having a disability, meaning they have impaired vision, hearing, mobility or cognitive functioning. The numbers for Virginia: Government assistance recipients:…
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Cuccinelli’s Strange Lesson in Federalism
By Peter Galuszka (Note: You’ve heard from Jim and Les on Ken Cuccinelli’s book. Here’s my review that runs in this week’s Style Weekly). Kenneth Cuccinelli, Virginia’s firebrand attorney general and Republican gubernatorial hopeful, is typically full of fire and vinegar that make him such a lively politician. But you’d never know it from his…
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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…